Today’s classic song of the day is “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, although Neil Young didn’t sing or play on it. It first appeared on the group’s Deja Vu album and was released as a single in September of 1970. The single only went to #30 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #20 on the Cash Box Top 100, however.
Graham Nash wrote “Our House” when he was living with fellow songwriter Joni Mitchell. (They first got together in 1968 and broke up in 1970.) Nash says the song was inspired by a relatively innocuous domestic event:
“One day Joan and I got up and went to breakfast at a delicatessen on Ventura Boulevard, and a few doors away there was a little antique store, and in the window Joan saw this vase, went inside, fell in love with it, bought it and brought it back to the house...
“It was a kind of a cold gray morning as it sometimes can be in Los Angeles, and I said, ‘Why don’t I light the fire and you put some flowers in the vase that you just bought.’ So she’s cutting stems and leaves and arranging flowers in this vase, and I’d lit the fire. Now, my and Joan’s life at the time were far from ordinary… and I thought, ‘What an ordinary moment.’ Here I am lighting the fire for my old lady and she’s putting flowers in this vase that she just bought. And I sat down at Joan’s piano and an hour later, ‘Our House’ was written.”
It may have been an ordinary moment but it led to a very special song, one that most people of a certain age can easily identify and sing along with. As the lyrics say:
Our house is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy ’cause of you
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, Crosby, Stills & Nash (still no Young) performing “Our House” live. They sang pretty good together.
