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"Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963.
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The song is a political satire about the development of suburbia, and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It mocks suburban tract housing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky", and which "all look just the same." "Ticky-tacky" is a reference to the shoddy material used in the construction of the houses.
Background
Reynolds was a folk singer-songwriter and political activist in the 1960s and 1970s. Nancy Reynolds, her daughter, explained that her mother came up with the song when she saw the housing developments around Daly City, California, built in the post-war era by Henry Doelger, particularly the neighborhood of Westlake.
My mother and father were driving South from San Francisco through Daly City when my mom got the idea for the song. She asked my dad to take the wheel, and she wrote it on the way to the gathering in La Honda where she was going to sing for the Friends Committee on Legislation. When Time magazine (I think, maybe Newsweek) wanted a photo of her pointing to the very place, she couldn’t find those houses because so many more had been built around them that the hillsides were totally covered.
Reynolds' version first appeared on her 1967 Columbia Records album Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth, and can also be found on the Smithsonian Folkways Records 2000 CD re-issue of Ear To The Ground. However, Pete Seeger's rendition of the song is known internationally, and reached number 70 in the Billboard Hot 100. Seeger was a friend of Reynolds, also a political activist, and like many others in the 1960s he used folk songs as a medium for protest.
Reception
The profundity of the satire was attested to by a university professor quoted in 1964 in Time magazine as saying, "I've been lecturing my classes about middle-class conformity for a whole semester. Here's a song that says it all in 1½ minutes."
The term "ticky-tacky" became a catchphrase during the 1960s, attesting to the song's popularity. However, according to Christopher Hitchens, satirist Tom Lehrer described "Little Boxes" as "the most sanctimonious song ever written".
Covers
The song has been recorded by many musicians and bands, some of whom have arranged and translated the song to meet their styles. The lyrics have been reprinted with photographs of "Little Box" houses in environmental publications.
Artists who have covered the song include Pete Seeger, Devendra Banhart, Linkin Park, Elvis Costello, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists (who added several new lyrics), Tim DeLaughter of The Polyphonic Spree, Donovan, Anjan Dutt, Ben Folds, Skott Freedman, Engelbert Humperdinck, The Individuals, Jenny and Johnny, Angélique Kidjo, Rilo Kiley, Kinky, Man Man, The Mountain Goats, Randy Newman, Nina & Frederik, Ozomatli, Phosphorescent, The Real Tuesday Weld, The Shins, Regina Spektor, The Submarines, Billy Bob Thornton, Walk off the Earth, The Womenfolk, Paddy Roberts (UK) and Rise Against.
The 1964 version of the song by The Womenfolk was the shortest single ever to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, at 1 minute 2 seconds; in 2016, it was surpassed by "PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen)".
The Spanish songwriter Adolfo Celdrán wrote the first Spanish version of the song, called "Cajitas", which was published in 1969 and had several successive reissues. Another Spanish version of the song, "Las Casitas del Barrio Alto", was written by the Chilean songwriter Víctor Jara in 1971, depicting in a mocking way the over-Europeanized and bourgeois lifestyle of the residents of the "Barrio Alto" (high-class neighborhood) in Santiago de Chile. A French version with the title "Petites boîtes" was performed by Graeme Allwright and was later covered by Kate & Anna McGarrigle on their 2003 album La vache qui pleure and by Weepers Circus on their 2009 album à la récré.