Little Boxes

              "Little Boxes" is a folk song by Malvina Reynolds, her form of commentary on the urbanization of San Fransisco during the 1960's. The point of the song is to show that despite people's attempts at diversity and uniqueness, everyone turns out the same, and all made out of cheap, repeatable material. She wrote the song in 1962, a timely opinion on the transformations happening in the Bay Area. The song was released in 1967, but was popularized further later on. From 2005 to 2008 the show "Weeds" used this song as the theme song, commentating on how an average affluent neighborhood pretends to be diverse and of substance, but in reality everyone is made of the same cheap materials that make up an average human being. The song was also covered by numerous bands including  Regina Spektor, Death Cab For Cutie, Linkin Park, and Walk off the Earth. Malvina Reynolds was a social activist and protest song writer. This particular song was meant to be commentary on the type of cookie-cutter tract housing of the period. The houses were typically 750 square feet, consisted of two bedrooms, no garage or basement, and an unfinished second floor. These houses sat on a 1/7th acre lot, about 60 feet wide. This was known as Levittown. Levitt and Sons were the contractors of these houses, finding cheep ways to build on these lots. They used Colorbestos sheets instead of shingles because they were cheeper and more common. This is what Reynolds refers to as being "ticky-tacky". Malvina Reynolds was born on August 23, 1900 in San Fransisco California, the child of Jewish socialist immigrants. Malvina was refused her diploma by Lowell High School because her parents were opposed to US participation in World War I. She was educated at the University of California in Berkley, and received her BA and MA in English. She became a social worker and a columnist for the People's World and, when World War II started, an assembly-line worker at a bomb factory. After the war she returned to Berkeley and took music theory classes in the early fifties. She later died on March 17, 1978 in Berkeley. There is a film biography about her called "Love it Like a Fool" that was made a few years before her death.