Little Boxes

Little Boxes

Malvina Reynolds

The third season of the Showtime series Weeds recently began. The popularity of the show has increased and the main theme song has become more recognizable. The song is called "Little Boxes" and was written in 1962 and originally performed by Malvina Reynolds. Since then, it's been covered by many artists and since last season, various musicians were asked to cover the song so it could be used in the beginning of each episode. They've continued this theme for the third season and this time around, there have been over ninety submissions. Below are the show's covers of the songs from last season and the current one. Also, I'll try updating each week with the latest episode's cover. I've chosen to put them in list format this time for organization purposes and so the same album art doesn't appear multiple times. There are also full versions that some of the artists recorded (click the "Full" link). I also attached them below in a subcategory.

Weeds Season 2

01 Elvis Costello
02 Death Cab For Cutie
03 Engelbert Humperdinck [Full]
04 Kate and Anna McGarrigle [Full]
05 Charles Barnett
06 Aidan Hawken
07 Ozomatli [Full]
08 The Submarines
09 Tim DeLaughter
10 Regina Spektor
11 Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice
12 Malvina Reynolds [Full]

Weeds Season 3

01 Randy Newman
02 Angelique Kidjo
03 Kinky
04 Donovan
05 Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters [Full]
06 The Shins [Full]
07 The Individuals

others will be added as the season progresses

English Covers:

 

Pete Seeger - Little Boxes

 

Pete Seeger - Little Boxes

 

Pete Seeger - Little Boxes (Live)

 

Pete Seeger - Little Boxes (Live)

The Womenfolk - Little Boxes

Nina & Frederik - Little Boxes

Keith Carradine - Little Boxes

Roger Scimé - Little Boxes

 

 

Kris Gruen - Little Boxes [Clean]

Kris Gruen - Little Boxes [Dirty]

Christopher O'Riley - Little Boxes

Devendra Banhart - Little Boxes

Abby Lappen - Little Boxes

The C.R.S. Players - Little Boxes

The Global Stage Orchestra - Little Boxes

Dogwelder - Little Boxes

Full Versions (of the 50 second long edits used on the show):

Engelbert Humperdinck - Little Boxes

Kate and Anna McGarrigle - Petites Boites

Ozomatli - Little Boxes

Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters - Little Boxes

The Shins - Little Boxes

Covers in Other Languages:

Graeme Allwright - Petites Boîtes

Nara Leão - Little Boxes

Victor Jara - Las Casitas del Barrio Alto

Parodies:

Tom Tuerff - Little Star Treks

Links: Music from Weeds (Showtime Site) | Wikipedia (Little Boxes) | List of Covers

Posted by Jason

bellawilfer wrote: Sep 17, 2007 at 1:43 PM

Fantastic job, but it would be great if you could note that Pete Seeger did more than just cover the song. Malvina Reynolds wrote it, but it definitely was Pete who made Little Boxes famous. I think his first recording of the song was on the live album of a 1963 concert at Carnegie Hall, We Shall Overcome, but there was a later studio version that was pretty successful as a single. There's what looks like quite a good discography on the Pete Seeger Appreciation Page.

Sixbucksamonkey wrote: Sep 17, 2007 at 7:04 PM

[ciò è buono] NICE! Decemberists version here.

 

Notes:
* French Voxer olivelela also has a post about the "Little Boxes" covers.
* There are apparently 3 different versions of the Pete Seeger cover. A live version that appears on The Essential Pete Seeger and Pete Seeger's Greatest Hits are the same exact versions. It's the same version that appears on We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert sans the stage banter. Then there are 2 studio recordings, one on Broadside Ballads, Vol. 2 that's acoustic and another on Headlines and Footnotes that uses a banjo.
* I noticed the "permalink" to this post includes an "s" after "little" making it "littles-boxes.html" instead of "little-boxes.html". That's a typo on my part because when I wrote up the entry, I entered "Littles Boxes" in the title field.