The members of America were living abroad when they recorded their first LP, the self titled "America" in 1971. They then began an inside joke with the title of their second LP, "Homecoming" which saw them returning to America as their residence and started a trend that saw the band name each subsequent album with a word starting with the letter H to wit, Hat Trick, Holiday, Hearts, Hideaway, Harbor and concluding with the mysteriously named album "Silent Letter" in 1979.

The first single issued from "Homecoming" was "A Horse With No Name" that entered the chart on February 19, 1972 at #84 and reached #1 for three weeks on March 25. "I Need You" followed on May 20, 1972 and was the second highest new entry that week at #62 and eventually peaked at #9.

The third single issued was the breezy and wistful "Ventura Highway". In the booklet for the boxed set titled Highway, he states that the song "reminds me of the time I lived in Omaha as a kid and how we'd walk through cornfields and chew on pieces of grass. There were cold winters, and I had images of going to California. So I think in the song I'm talking to myself, frankly: 'How long you gonna stay here, Joe?' I really believe that 'Ventura Highway' has the most lasting power of all my songs. It's not just the words — the song and the track have a certain fresh, vibrant, optimistic quality that I can still respond to". The song has a "Go West, young man" motif in the structure of a conversation between an old man named Joe and a young and hopeful kid. Joe was modeled after a "grumpy" old man he had met while his dad was stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi at Keesler Air Force Base. He continues "I remember vividly having this mental picture of the stretch of the coastline traveling with my family when I was younger. Ventura Highway itself, there is no such beast, what I was really trying to depict was the Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 1, which goes up to the town of Ventura."

Dewey Bunnell, the song's vocalist and writer, has said that the lyric "alligator lizards in the air" in the song is a reference to the shapes of clouds in the sky he saw in 1963 while his family was driving down the coast from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California, where they had a flat tire. While his father changed the tire, his brother and he stood by the side of the road and watched the clouds and saw a road sign for "Ventura".

The acoustic sound of the guitars drives each of their songs and they personified the new mellow sounds of the 70's that offered relief from the frantic and sensational 1960's.

Superstar recording artist Prince found inspiration from "Ventura Highway" and the line "Sorry boy, but I've been hit by a purple rain" and used the words "Purple Rain" as the title of hit hit song, film and his tour.