Songfacts®:

• This is perhaps one of Kate's most complicated songs, and she says herself it is really lots of random thoughts:
  
  "Stars fell on Alabama" - Could be literal - could refer to the many Southern stars.
  
  "Near the rocky shoals" - Refers to Muscle Shoals recording studio where she and many others have recorded.
  
  "In a casket factory" - The studio was originally a casket factory.
  
  "Where they found Soul" - Soul music is synonymous with Muscle Shoals.
  
  "See that skinny boy there drinkin' him a coke, didn't we just see him on the Sullivan Show" - Elvis before he was famous - Ed Sullivan - Kate is a self proclaimed Elvis fan.
  
  "We walk among the stones" - We walk among the memories and in the footsteps of those who have gone before us. Also we walk among the stones of life.
  
  "Some say it was the cotton and workin' side by side" - Kate grew up during the time of Civil rights movement in the South and was heavily influenced by what she saw. The Cotton, and the slaves owned to pick it were both a cause of Civil war and civil rights; segregation.
  
  "Now we're left to wonder what happened to the sound" - The end of the great rock and roll music, and Muscle Shoals sound.
  
  "Was it two kings dying?" - Knowing Kate's background, it seems obvious that the two Kings are Martin Luther King, who fought for civil rights and was assassinated (there are many actual and possible references to Luther in her music) and the other is Elvis. "Who nailed the coffin down" - Who saw an end to the music as it was known, when Elvis died, and also an end to what King had been fighting for - would it have all been resolved had he not died?