Songfacts®:

• Graham Nash wrote this sentimental tune about the house he shared with Joni Mitchell in LA's Laurel Canyon from 1968-1970. It's not often you hear a young rock star celebrating domestic bliss, but Nash was very happy living with Mitchell, who often served as his muse.
  
  Mitchell inspired songs not just by Nash, but also by his bandmate David Crosby, her lover from a few years earlier. Mitchell also wrote the CSN song "Woodstock" and created the painting used on their 1974 compilation album So Far.
  
  During the time when Nash was working on this song and others for the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album Deja Vu, Mitchell was working on her seminal Ladies Of The Canyon. Both albums were released in 1970.
• According to Nash, the lyrics are true to life and a "portrait of our life together." They really did have two cats in the yard along with a fireplace.
• Biographer Dave Zimmer shared what Graham Nash told him about the song in the 2007 CSN&Y Historian's interview: "He once told me: 'The time that Joni and I were living together was really interesting, because I had left my band [The Hollies] successfully, I had left my country [England] successfully, I had been accepted here [Los Angeles, California], and I was feeling great. And Joni was feeling great, too; she had started to realize who she was and the fantastic work she was doing. She was painting and designing her second album cover, doing that self-portrait. And I remember being totally in awe of her. She'd go and make some supper and come down and we'd be eating, then she'd all of a sudden space out, go to the piano ... to see her sit down and write 'Rainy Night House' and all those other things was just mind blowing.'" >>

  Suggestion credit:
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• In the earliest live performances of the song, Nash would introduce it as being "about my woman." He never used Mitchell's name, though.
• According to Graham Nash's biography Wild Tales, a famous line in this song had a very specific inspiration. He and Joni Mitchell went to an antiques store and she picked out a vase. When they got home, Nash said, "I'll light the fire while you place the flowers in the vase that you bought today." He stopped dead in his tracks and went immediately to the piano.
• "Our House" was the last single from the Déjà Vu album, their first with Neil Young in the group. It's a landmark album, so successful it kept up demand for the group even though they were largely inactive over the next few years. The first single was "Woodstock," about the festival where they made their mark. Next was the Graham Nash composition "Teach Your Children," which was climbing the charts when Neil Young came up with the song "Ohio" in response to the Kent State Shootings. That song was rush released in June 1970 as a standalone single. After it faded from the charts, "Our House" was released as a single, reaching its US chart peak of #30 in October.
  
  The band didn't return to action until 1974 when they launched the first stadium tour in rock history. They couldn't muster an album, though, and the follow-up to Déjà Vu didn't appear until 1977 when they issued CSN, this time without Young.
• When Nash sings about the cozy room where the windows are illuminated with "fiery gems for you," he's referring to Mitchell's collection of multicolored glass in the window that would catch the light.
• This was used in '80s TV spots for Eckrich sausage and the Pacific Bell telephone company.
• Mandy Moore sings "Our House" in the 2020 "Clouds" episode of the TV series This Is Us, where her character, Rebecca, also tells the story of the song and takes a pilgrimage to Joni Mitchell's house. Other TV shows to use it include:
  
  Cheers ("Dinner at Eight-ish" - 1987, when Frasier and Lilith move in together)
  The King of Queens ("Mama Cast" - 2006)
  How I Met Your Mother ("Home Wreckers" - 2010)
  The Blacklist ("Marvin Gerard (No. 80)" - (2015)
  
  Movies to use this song include:
  
  The Strawberry Statement (1970)
  My Girl 2 (1994)
  Bye Bye Love (1995)
  Your Mother Should Know (2018)
• In lieu of an instrumental solo, the group sing a "la la" section in the bridge. Stephen Stills floated the idea of doing something different in this section, and Nash thought a vocal harmony could work. They tried it and it sounded great, so they left it in the song.
• Graham Nash sang "Our House" to Joni Mitchell at a concert to celebrate her 75th birthday held at at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles on November 7, 2018, with Emmylou Harris and Rufus Wainwright providing harmony vocals. It was the only song not written by Mitchell performed that night; Brandi Carlile, Seal, James Taylor, Chaka Khan, and Norah Jones also took part. An album from the concert called Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration was released a few months later.
• An official video, animated by Jeff Scher, was posted on June 9, 2021.