It's really the journey of one girl and her perception of her environment and how she starts out as a wide-eyed person, but everyone gets hardened by life, but not necessarily to the point where you can't feel anymore."

[5] A critic for Billboard said of the song: "it bears the do-it-my-way signature of a singer/songwriter who relies on piano; a meandering, storytelling lyrical style; and deceptively sweet vocals that underlie an intellectual bent ...

The in-depth lyrics which almost any nomad can relate to on a person level gives it an extraordinary inner-meaning, and the spectacular background arrangement is something that most pop songs lack.

Slant magazine named it the sixth best single of 2004, writing: "[it's] the kind of song that truly cements a career ... poignant, bloody, fleeting, and beautiful, much like adolescence".

Anti-folk singer Kimya Dawson performed a cover of "White Houses" during a live concert at Falmouth, Maine in May 2005.

"[12] She attributed the censoring of the song to the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy involving Janet Jackson, which had occurred earlier that year.

[13] "White Houses" became the subject of a prank that Ashton Kutcher pulled on Carlton for the MTV television show Punk'd.

During Carlton's rehearsal for a scheduled performance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in November 2004, Kutcher's Punk'd crewmembers (disguised as staff from The Tonight Show) said Carlton needed to change both the bridge of the song and the line "I'm too thin" (in light of the publicity surrounding Mary-Kate Olsen's bout of anorexia nervosa).