While some of the biggest hits in music history have been on the long side (like “American Pie” and “Hey Jude”), other songs to climb the charts over the years have been surprisingly brief. In fact, back in 1964, a classic folk track from a pioneering all-female group made history by becoming the shortest single to ever hit the Billboard Hot 100.
Originally written by singer-songwriter Malvina Reynolds in 1962, “Little Boxes” was first recorded by folk icon Pete Seeger and went on to become his only charting single, peaking at #70 in 1964. Seeger’s version, which clocks in at just around 2 minutes, was pretty short to begin with. But that same year, another act would release their own take on “Little Boxes” — and that one was even shorter.
Hailing from Los Angeles, California, The Womenfolk were a unique group in the mid-60s, simply because (as the band’s name implies), all the members were women. Though they weren’t incredibly commercially successful, their cover of “Little Boxes” managed to land at #83 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964, making history in the process: At just 1 minute and 1 second long, the track became the shortest single to hit the charts…and it held that honor for decades.
To be fair, “Little Boxes” doesn’t have a ton of lyrics, so it makes sense that The Womenfolk’s cover would be short. In just a few lines, the satirical anthem delivers a scathing sendup of suburbia in a surprisingly upbeat way:
Little boxes on the hillside / Little boxes made of ticky tacky / Little boxes on the hillside / Little boxes all the same / There’s a green one, then a pink one, and a blue one and a yellow one / And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same
(If you’re one of the many people who’ve always casually wondered what “ticky tacky” was but never bothered to find out, it was a term for low-quality materials used to build houses.)
According to Reynolds’ daughter, Nancy Schimmel, her mother got the idea for the song when she drove past a row of houses like those described in the song. But since Reynolds was already a singer-songwriter, why didn’t she just record the song herself? As Schimmel explained in a 2020 interview with Berkeley Podcast for Music, misogyny in the music industry was mostly to blame.
Photo by Underwood Archives on Getty Images
“[Seeger] had been performing since the ’30s,” Schimmel said. “He was a performer. He wasn’t really a songwriter. But there was a prejudice. It was definitely misogyny, but it was particularly against someone of her age. I mean, a man her age would have been okay. But for a woman of her age to try to get into music, she had started out singing folk songs, but as soon as she started writing her own songs, she sang them. And when she started touring in the ’60s, she never sang anything but her own songs.”
“She started before there was the term ‘singer-songwriter,'” Schimmel added.
“So, you know, she was a woman singing songs she wrote. She has been referred to, and in fact was referred to in one of her obituaries, as a blues singer. She had written a couple blues and she’d written some bluesy songs like ‘No Hole in My Head.’ But I think maybe it’s because of her age. It’s okay for women blues singers to be older, to be middle-aged. But it’s not OK for women pop singers to be older. They have to be young. And she was as much influenced by the pop music of her time as she was by the folk music. She’d heard both.”
While Reynolds might not be a household name today, “Little Boxes” is an impressive legacy — even if it’s no longer the shortest song ever to hit the charts. In 2025,Jack Black broke the record for shortest tune ever to make the Billboard Hot 100 with “Steve’s Lava Chicken” from the Minecraft movie, lasting just 34 seconds, per NPR.
Related: Iconic Folk Singer Who Performed at Woodstock Disappeared 35 Years Ago — Where Is She Now?
