By Barbryn
As the response to last week’s blog proved, there are a lot of songs about houses. Then again, considering that houses are where we spend much of our time and where many of the most significant events of our lives play out, perhaps it’s surprising there aren’t more.
In Come On-a My House, Rosemary Clooney invites us in with promises of candy, cake, Easter eggs and an impressive selection of fruits. Based on a traditional Armenian melody and traditional Armenian hospitality, this was a huge in 1951. (Clooney hated it apparently.)
Mark E Smith isn’t going to invite you in for plums and pomegranates but he seems keen to show off My New House. No rabbit hutch about it, though the spare room is a little haunted by Mr Reagan who hung himself at number 13. It’ll be great when it’s decorated.
A truism that crops up in an awful lot of songs is that houses are happy homes when they’re full of love but thoroughly depressing buildings when love or a lover has moved out. So for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Our House is a very, very, very, fine house and “everything is easy ’cause of you”. (Shacking up with Joni Mitchell is going to be easy? Graham, mate…). But The Four Tops are left with a whole lot of emptiness and 7 Rooms of Gloom.
Still, that’s got to be better than paying exorbitant rent for a leaky room in a Dry Weather House, infested with cockroaches and too small to even turn around in: an irresistible Jamaican classic from Hubert Porter & George Moxey's Calypso Quintet. Jonathan Richman is far happier in his Rooming House on Venice Beach. There’s just a radiator and a sagging bed, but it’s cheap and there’s lots of ancient hippie types around.
Moving into a house of your own is a rite of passage, though it’s a bittersweet memory for Grant Hart: “It was the first place we had to ourselves / I didn't know it would be the last”. 2541 is the kind of place where you have to keep the stove on all night long so the mice won’t freeze, but there are big windows to let in the sun.
“Who needs a house upon a hill / When you can have one on four wheels?” asks Kacey Musgraves in My House, which makes trailer life sound a lot more idyllic than it looked in Nomadland. As long as there’s water and electric and a place to drain the septic, you can travel anywhere without leaving your own living room.
The houses where we grow up shape who we are, but as Thomas Wolfe wrote, you can’t go home again. Still, Miranda Lambert tries: she thinks she’ll be able to find herself by returning to The House That Built Me.
In Paul Kelly’s spoken-word song, a cleaner’s young son gets a glimpse of how people live in the richer part of town. Other People’s Houses are strange, mysterious places, with books and records and strange foods in the fridge.
I was hoping someone was going to nominate Katherine Priddy’s The First House on the Left – thanks to tincanman for coming through. Priddy says: “It’s inspired by the little old house where I grew up and all the memories captured within those four walls – both for me and for all the other inhabitants who’ve lived there over the centuries. It might just be another terraced cottage to passersby, but to those who’ve called it home, it’s everything.” (*)
[(*) This sounds a lot like the inspiration behind my recently published novel The Lindens, which tells the stories of a house and its inhabitants over the course of 150 years, and which our friendly Landlord is allowing me to shamelessly plug here.]
Tom Waits wrote A House Where Nobody Lives about an abandoned house that he used to pass on the school run. “Once it held laughter / Once it held dreams” but now the weeds have grown as high as the door and the birds nest in the chimney. When Waits sings it, that old truism sounds like wisdom:
What makes a house grand, oh it ain't the roof or the doors
If there's love in a house, it's a palace for sure
Without love, it ain't nothing but a house
A house where nobody lives.
The Abode A-List Playlist:
Rosemary Clooney – Come On-A My House
The Fall – My New House
Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young – Our House
The Four Tops – 7 Rooms of Gloom
Jonathan Richman – Rooming House On Venice Beach
Grant Hart – 2541
Hubert Porter & George Moxey's Calypso Quintet – Dry Weather House
Kacey Musgraves – My House
Miranda Lambert – The House That Built Me
Paul Kelly – Other People's Houses
Katherine Priddy – First House on the Left
Tom Waits – House Where Nobody Lives
The Built for Home B-List Playlist:
Madness – Our House
The Pretty Things – A House in the Country
LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk is Playing at My House
X – In This House That I Call Home
Eels – Susan's House
Beach House – Holiday House
The Cinematic Orchestra – To Build a Home
Danny Schmidt – Houses Sing
Alasdair Roberts – The Whole House is Singing
Olivia Chaney – House on a Hill
Françoise Hardy – La Maison où J’ai Grandi
Roberta Flack – Cottage for Sale
Guru’s Wildcard Pick:
I’m From Barcelona - Treehouse
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations in response to last week's topic:
Something to dwell on: songs about houses. The next topic will launch on Thursday after 1pm UK time.
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