"A Horse with No Name" (America)

The band America pretty much started its career banking on the fact that it sounded a lot like Crosby, Stills & Nash.  And in the case of its first hit "A Horse with No Name," CSN's occasional fourth member, Neil Young.
The song's composer Dewey Bunnell has even admitted that people mistaking the tune for a Young song aided its success in 1972.
Just like Bunnell's later hit "Ventura Highway," "A Horse with No Name" was inspired by his memories of riding through the Mojave Desert as a kid.  Bunnell's father, who was in the U.S. Air Force, had been stationed in California for a brief time before he and the family ultimately were relocated to a base in England.  In short, the composition (originally titled "Desert Song") was just a 19-year-old Bunnell's way of working through homesickness and his longing to trade the English dampness for sun soaked climes.  
In other words, it's not about heroin addiction, despite what some radio programmers and listeners thought in the 70s.
Also like "Ventura Highway," "A Horse with No Name" is not the greatest song lyrically.  Lines like The heat was hot kind of leave you thinking, "Yeah, no duh, America."
But it was the perfect song for me as a toddler.  The lyrics are innocuous and quite descriptive—great for a little mind that liked to imagine.  I'd put my mom's copy of the single on our stereo and pretend that I was riding my rocking horse (who did have a name: Spotty) through the desert, spotting the various plants and birds and rocks and things that Bunnell was singing about.  Plus, it had a catchy hook that I could La-la-lalala-lala along to with ease. 
Listening to it today, its simple strummed guitars and bongo percussion really do feel like a solitary tour of arid landscapes via horseback.  I also have to applaud the late Dan Peek's contribution on bass; that insistent pulse throughout mimics the sound of galloping hooves and lends the song a little bit of soul, saving it from being some simplistic, anti-urban hippie ditty.