The song was a big regional hit in Texas and peaked in the lower reaches of the Billboard charts, but has become better-known today, in large part, due to the band's uncanny imitation of Highway 61 Revisited-era Bob Dylan.

[2] The song is based around a basic ascending tandem guitar-organ riff that has a striking similarity to Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone".

It's Dylanesque characteristics continue with Weiss's lead vocal, described by music historian Richie Unterberger as being "like vintage Dylan, a grinning, surrealistic, half-spoken rant" at a specific woman that boasted about being better-off without her.

Weiss's homage, borderline parody, to Dylan concludes with an enthusiastic yowl, again, a detail featured on "Like a Rolling Stone".

[3][4] Unterberger goes on to characterize "A Public Execution" as "one of the few rip-offs so utterly accurate that it could easily fool listeners into believing it was the original article".