Song of the Day 2/23: America, “A Horse With No Name”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona
When listeners first heard America’s “A Horse With No Name” in 1972 a lot of them had questions. Why did this new Neil Young song seem to pop up out of nowhere? And why would Neil write a line like “the heat was hot?”
Well, at least they knew where the band came from by its name. No, probably not. America came out of England.
The singer does sound kind of like Neil Young. And the song is more or less in his style, not to mention that of Crosby, Stills and Nash. But it was clear this was a pretty good tune. A little derivative, sure, but the influences were first-rate.
America the band was formed in England by Americans who had moved there as youngsters with their Air Force families. Maybe they looked with a certain longing at America the country and its Laurel Canyon music scene.
The band recorded “A Horse With No Name” in England but it became their first big hit after they moved to California. It shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart— replacing Young’s “Heart of Gold!
The awkwardness of their lyrics never totally disappeared. Unless you find “alligator lizards in the air” plausible.
“A Horse With No Name” has a nice hallucinatory quality, but sometimes they just can’t quite find the right word. They ride that nameless horse in a desert filled with “plants, and birds, and rocks” and, uh, “things.” Or they abandon grammar to make a line scan. The desert is a place “where there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.”
Co-founder Dewey Bunnell still tours as America. The other remaining co-founder, Gerry Beckley, recently retired from the touring part. (Dan Peek left the band back in 1977 and died in 2011). Bunnell and the band will be on the road from March into the summer, when the heat will probably be hot.
Here’s the band performing “A Horse With No Name” in a 1972 video with desert visuals. Be on the lookout rocks and things.
The group escaped the desert later that year and found itself on L.A.’s “Ventura Highway.” It took them on another trip to the top of the Billboard chart.
Randy Newman called it, “This song about a kid who thinks he’s taken acid.”
A kid on acid would write better lyrics.
America has very rich harmony and Horse WITH NO NAME has superb lyrics “THE HUMANS CAN GIVE NO LOVE” really stood out to me I’m sure he didn’t me all humans. Great group.
Loved BREAD, VERY POWERFUL HARMONIES as well Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “JUST A SONG BEFORE I GO” is a very beautiful song that got no credit if it were women singing it would be ANGELIC. To me that’s how good it is. But America cannot be denied their due especially for those two songs Alby has posted.
Outstanding choices. Thank you very much for sharing.
It was Nathan who posted those songs, not me. Their harmonies are nice, but the full verse with the line you cited reads:
The ocean is a desert with its life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love
The ocean is most emphatically not a desert, not even metaphorically. The cities being built on ground has nothing to do with humans giving love. And I won’t even get into the fractured syntax of “for there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.”
And what’s with “in the desert you can remember your name” – but apparently you can’t remember the horse’s?
“I Am the Walrus” makes more sense.
The song also only has 2 chords:
Em(add9) (or Em9 without the 7th)
D6/9
That’s it. There is no V-I movement at all.
As a non-musician, I have no idea what you mean…
He means it’s about as primitive as a song can get, George Thorogood notwithstanding. Most songs are built on chord progressions, but this one doesn’t progress. It doesn’t go anywhere, so there’s never a feeling of resolution.
Music is about creating and releasing tension. The V chord creates tension that wants to resolve to I or root chord of the key. You hear the V-I change at the end of most songs.
“Horse With No Name” never resolves. Nothing wrong with that; it just is very unusual for a song. And having only two chords made it accessible to being played by aspiring beginner guitar players.
Regardless of the literal meaning of the lyrics, the whole song creates a feeling, which is what good songs are supposed to do.
It’s definitely an earworm, but I find it odd that lyrically it’s about a journey and musically it doesn’t go anywhere.