Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros' Alex Ebert Sets The Record Straight On Claims That 'Home' Is The 'Worst Song Ever'

Cast your mind back to the start of the 2010s, and you might remember the ubiquitous nature of an indie folk trend which has since been pejoratively dubbed the ‘stomp clap’ sound.

It’s quite easy to pick out, with – as the name suggests – indie artists utilising acoustic instruments alongside percussion largely focused on handclaps and the stomping of their feet. Tracks like The Lumineers' Ho Hey are solid examples, while acts such as Mumford & Sons and Of Monsters And Men have also been lumped into the same category due to their similar sound.

One song that is often deemed emblematic of the entire genre is Home, a 2009 track by Los Angeles outfit Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros.

If you were an active music consumer at the time of its release, you’d certainly remember it. Its whistling intro and sentimental lyricism was featured on commercials, became a prominent fixture of TV shows, hit #15 on triple j’s Hottest 100 of the year, and swiftly turned the group into overnight sensations while the phrase “Home is wherever I’m with you” served as perfect fodder for burgeoning apps such as Instagram and Pinterest.

Recently, however, it appears as though the tides have changed and there’s been a strong focus on the disdain many have for this era of music. In fact, Stereogum went so far as to collect a bunch of examples of the negative discourse towards Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros that has made its way around the internet this week.

Put simply, the breezy, folky nature of this music’s era has turned from fond nostalgia into a source of disdain and ridicule, with one Tweet even going so far as to call out Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros’ Tiny Desk Concert performance, labelling Home as "the “worst song ever made.”

But is it really? That’s the question that Alex Ebert, the former frontman of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros has taken to social media to address.

Though the group split in 2016, Ebert has been active as a solo artist, and he’s well versed in what exactly makes a song a “good song,” as he outlined in a recent video shared to Instagram.

“If the bones are good, if the bones let the song survive context, if you pull it out of acoustic guitar, you put a piano there and it works, it’s a good song,” he explains. “You pull it out of the piano, you put it on the harp, it’s still working, you take out of the harp, you sing it a capella, it’s still working, it’s a good song.”

Ebert pointed out that Home is a song that has managed to transcend genres, going so far as to being covered by myriad artists over the years in countless styles, with a 2020 rendition by Edith Whiskers going viral on TikTok.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alexander Ebert (@alex_ebert)

However, he was quick to explain that Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros were far from followers in the stomp clap genre and instead pioneers.

“By the way we were the first to do the stomp and clap fuckin’ folk pop thing to the point where the Lumineers, they sought out one of our co-producers — he wasn’t actually our co-producer — and were like, ‘Hey, do that Edward Sharpe thing for us,’” he explains. “For real, that’s a real story.

“Of Monsters & Men, they got our album before they ever made an album because our agent was their manager and she showed it to them and they basically got so close to Home that we almost sued them. They were doing Apple commercials and I was getting calls saying, ‘Congratulations.’ That’s how closely people started doing this.”

As Ebert closed, he noted that while certain recordings of Home – especially the most famous one that people know best – aren’t exactly perfect, “the bones of it at least, are great.”

“Home isn’t a good recording, it’s just a good song,” he explained. “But it not being a good recording is what I love about Home. It’s like a moment.

“We recorded it on tape, we didn’t even know how to record on tape, it sounds like it’s made in some muffled garage. I wanted to spread the porous happenstance incidentalism of Edward Sharpe. Instead what I spread was stomp claps taken and recorded better, and that’s depressing. But Home is apparently a good song.”

While it might be easy to look back on that era and cringe while Home soundtracks an embarrassing slideshow of your life, it’s important to remember that even if time hasn’t treated the ‘stomp clap’ genre kindly, maybe it’s time to strip the songs away and reinvent them.

As Shakespeare said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” and as Ebert said, “If the bones are good […] it’s a good song.”