Malvina Reynolds, who died in 1978, was a social activist and writer of protest songs. She wrote this song as a political statement about the uniformity, the sameness, which she believed was being fostered by what are now known as "Cookie-Cutter" or "Tract" houses; houses along suburban streets with identical floor plans.

While the US housing industry's typical year consists of 1 to 1.25 million homes built, for a 5-year period during World War II the number of houses built was nearly zero. Enter: Levittown. The advent of the "Mass Housing" industry was brought about by William J. Levitt. Originally tried on a smaller scale in the 1920s, it was after the War that Levitt began building in earnest. Seeking to alleviate the housing shortage brought about by the War, he took Henry Ford's assembly-line style of building cars and applied it to building houses.

Each house was 750 square feet, consisted of 2 bedrooms, no garage, no basement, an unfinished second floor, and sat on one-seventh-acre lots that measured 60 feet in width. He named all his suburban housing developments "Levittown."

Levitt and Sons found ways to cut costs on the building materials, using sheet rock instead of plaster, and asbestos tiles, which would eventually crumble. They used Colorbestos sheets instead of shingles because they were cheap and easy to come by. It was these practices that may have inspired the use of the phrase "ticky-tacky" in this song.

Was used as a theme song for the show Weeds, and covered brilliantly by Canadian group, Walk Off The Earth.

*****REVISED/REFORMATTED April 26, 2019 - SR*****