Domestic bliss but make it weird

Songs about building a home while being a little wacky

The starting place for this playlist was songs about sharing a home where a family, found or otherwise, can be happily wacky and quirky and queer, in all senses of the word. I had two songs that fit this to a T, but it turns out that’s a hyper-specific concept, and there wasn’t really anything else in my awareness that was more of exactly the same. I’ll explain how the theme got diluted later. 

The image of (biological) family rooted in a single-unit house is one that’s usually deployed to uphold conservative values. I’m fascinated by the tension represented in the first two songs between buying into that image while also flaunting societal norms by being really strange. A lot of queer people, myself included, have spent a lot of time and energy disentangling the cultural imperative to marry and buy a house and have kids from our own desires. That can be a very fraught process, so I’m comforted by music saying that you can have the house and family and still be a weirdo.

That being said, the songs in question are also very goofy, so I don’t want to get too earnest.

“Kooks” by David Bowie (Hunky Dory, 1971)

There’s some room for interpretation, but David Bowie was probably a straight guy who played bi because that was trendy at the birth of glam rock. Plus, this song was written right after his wife gave birth to his son, so on one level it’s reinforcing cultural norms. But the image it paints is of two genuinely weird people who don’t really know how to be parents nevertheless doing their best to raise the child they love. This is my favorite verse:

And if you ever have to go to school
Remember how they messed up this old fool
Don't pick fights with the bullies or the cads
’Cause I'm not much cop at punching other people’s dads
And if the homework brings you down
Then we'll throw it on the fire and take the car downtown

I love the idea that the family unit is actually the thing protecting the child from the normative influences of the outside world and creating a space where it’s okay to not fit in. And the chorus asking the question “will you stay?” gives the child a level of agency not normally granted to infants. Also, between Bowie’s voice cracking and trilling and his long hair and fur coat on the album cover, this is a queer performance, whether or not he was.

“Crackerbox Palace” by George Harrison (Thirty Three & ⅓, 1976)

Despite being a Beatles fanatic since 2012, I only recently got into solo George. When I first heard this song, I immediately associated it with “Kooks.” It’s almost like that child grew up and gave his own perspective on being raised in a wacky household where above all he is loved.

The music video for this song makes it clear that it’s about George Harrison’s real house, Friar Park, and the colorful cast of characters he brought into it, through his home recording studio and his support of other people’s artistic endeavors (the video has a cameo from Eric Idle of Monty Python). 

Try to catch the split-second when this shot appears in the video

Again, if you only listen to the lyrics, there’s this sense of something in between biological and found family. The speaker is born into it, and yet the household welcomes him as if he intentionally chose to come. They expect him to abide by their ways when he’s there, but he is free to go wherever he chooses. 

Both songs also convey a strong sense of place – of a home created intentionally to suit the people who dwell in it. That was the thread I picked up on when I ran out of songs about being actively weird. 

“Yellow Submarine” by The Beatles (Revolver, 1966)

Look, I don’t like this song. The chorus is tedious and the animated movie traumatized me as a kid. But this was the first place my mind went when looking for other songs that fit the vibe, and the lyrics are undeniably about founding a utopian commune with all your friends. 

There are a couple other Beatles songs that are sort of ideologically similar. “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Octopus’s Garden” are the first that came to mind, so I guess that’s what they gave Ringo. But “Yellow Submarine” has the combination of chosen family and creating a home together, so it’s the one that made the cut.

“Care of Cell 44” by The Zombies (Odessey and Oracle, 1968)

I once saw someone saying that the Zombies have a totally outsized influence on late 60s musical memory, considering they only released one remembered album. I seem to be contributing to that, because this is the second time a track from said album has shown up here. But if I had to pick one Zombies song to hold onto, it would be this one. 

It’s about the speaker brimming with excitement as he prepares his house for the arrival of a loved one who’s getting released from prison. I don’t know whether the the situation in the 60s was the same, but the present-day stigmatization of incarcerated people is something I adamantly resist, so I’m charmed and amazed by a pop tune about being overjoyed to see a friend/partner again without worrying about them being tainted by their “prison stay,” as the Zombies casually refer to it. True, there’s no reference to family per se, but it does have the same physicality of home and unconditional love as the other songs.

“Folding Chair” by Regina Spektor (Far, 2009)

I’m a little on the fence about how well this song fits, because the family that’s briefly alluded to is more hypothetical than actual, but it’s still about acceptance and being a little off-kilter from the norm. These lines sound very reminiscent of the parents in “Kooks:”

Let’s get a silver bullet trailer
And have a baby boy
I’ll safety pin his clothes all cool and you’ll
Graffiti up his toys

“Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Déjà Vu, 1970)

Here’s where I gave up on the weird part of the theme. Graham Nash wrote this song when he was living with Joni Mitchell, so again, it’s textually heterosexual. There’s really nothing in the lyrics to suggest anything other than an ordinary (read: straight, not societally stigmatized) couple finding joy in living together.

But the description of their home is so beautifully rendered, both in lyric and music. There’s also no gendered pronouns, so you can imagine the couple as whatever configuration of people you want. Personally, I’m a master of projecting queer interpretations onto songs by straight people, so in my head this is just as much about found family as the rest of them.

“The Gambler” by fun. (Aim and Ignite, 2009)

There’s no such lyrical leeway for queer interpretation with this song. Fun is one of those bands I was really into in middle school and now am kind of embarrassed by, but I also can’t bring myself to completely stop liking them. This song presents a completely normative vision of a husband and wife looking back on raising their kids, looking ahead to the years they’ll continue to spend together, and ultimately delighting in living in the moment in the home they’ve made together. And to this day I think it’s one of the most romantic songs I’ve ever heard.

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It’s probably no coincidence that most of this playlist is from the late 60s and early 70s. For one thing, once I was situated in the early Bowie/post-Beatles moment I struggled to get out. But also there’s a lot of relevant music from that era because this is a hippie kind of theme. That being said, I’m sure there’s similar songs out there, not necessarily from that era, that I haven’t heard before, so if you know of anything that fits, leave a comment. The main criteria are 1) being a little weird and 2) a physical description of home.