A Horse with No Name

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"A Horse with No Name" is a song by the band America and their first single.

Development

America's self-titled debut album was initially released in Europe with only moderate success and without the song "A Horse with No Name". Looking for a song that would be popular in both the United States and Europe, producer Ian Samwell helped the group to record the song and persuaded the Warner Brothers label to re-release the album with "Horse" included.

Originally entitled "Desert Song", the song was renamed at Samwell's suggestion. It was written on a rainy day in England and was intended to capture the feel of the hot, dry desert Bunnell remembered from his childhood at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The song is easily recognizable largely due to the fact that during the verses, the same two notes are sung repeatedly, with no variation.

Reception

Despite—or perhaps because of—its being banned in some locales (Kansas City, among others) for supposed drug references ("horse" is a common slang term for heroin), the song rose to number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and the album quickly went platinum.

The most common criticism of the song, even addressed in the liner notes of America's box set, was its similarity to Neil Young in sound and style. In fact, "Horse" unseated Young's "Heart of Gold" from the number one spot. In the liner notes, Bunnell says, "I know that virtually everyone, on first hearing, assumed it was Neil. I never fully shied away from the fact that I was inspired by him. I think it's in the structure of the song as much as in the tone of my voice. It did hurt a little, because we got some pretty bad backlash." To this day it remains a common misconception that "Horse" is a Neil Young song, but its success opened the door for other hits from the album, including "I Need You," "Sandman," and "Riverside".

This song has also been ridiculed for the banal lyric, "The heat was hot". Randy Newman once described it as a song "about a kid who thinks he's taken acid".

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References

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