School's Out (song)


"School's Out" is a song first recorded as the title track of Alice Cooper's fifth album. It was released as the album's second single on April 26, 1972. It has been regarded as the band's signature song and reached number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Inspiration and writing

Cooper has said he was inspired to write the song when answering the question, "What's the greatest three minutes of your life?". Cooper said: "There's two times during the year. One is Christmas morning, when you're just getting ready to open the presents. The greed factor is right there. The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you're sitting there and it's like a slow fuse burning. I said, 'If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it's going to be so big.'"
Cooper has also said it was inspired by a line from a Bowery Boys movie. On his radio show, "Nights with Alice Cooper", he joked that the main riff of the song was inspired by a song by Miles Davis. Cooper said that guitarist Glen Buxton created the song's opening riff.
The lyrics of "School's Out" indicate that not only is the school year ended for summer vacation, but ended forever, and that the school itself has been literally blown up. It incorporates the childhood rhyme, "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks" into its lyrics. It also featured children contributing some of the vocals. "Innocence" in the lyric "...and we got no innocence" is frequently changed in concert to "intelligence" and sometimes replaced with "etiquette." The song appropriately ends with a school bell sound that fades out.
Later performances saw Alice Cooper incorporate parts of the first verse of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2", a song by Pink Floyd into "School's Out."

Release and reception

"School's Out" became Alice Cooper's first major hit single, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart and propelling the album to #2 on the Billboard 200 pop albums chart. It was the highest-charting single for the Alice Cooper band, and its #7 peak position was matched only by "Poison" among Cooper's solo efforts. Billboard ranked it as the No. 75 song for 1972. In Canada, the single went to #3 on the RPM Top Singles Chart following the album reaching #1. In Britain, the song went to #1 on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in August 1972. It also marked the first time that Alice Cooper became regarded as more than just a theatrical novelty act.
The single version of the song is a slightly sped-up narrow stereo remix of the album version with one major difference — the "turn-off" effect used upon the school bell and sound effects at the end of the album version is not used on the single version, allowing the school bell and effects to simply fade out.
Some radio stations banned the song from their airwaves, stating that the song gave the students an impression of rebelliousness against childhood education. Teachers, parents, principals, counselors, and psychologists also shunned the song and demanded several radio stations ban the song from ever being played on the air.
"School's Out" was ranked #326 on Rolling Stones list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2009 it was named the 35th best hard rock song of all time by VH1 and the song appeared on the TV show American Idol in 2010. The Guardian placed it as number 3 on its list of "The 20 best glam-rock songs of all time." In 2018, Ian Chapman and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have called it a "glam rock anthem." Nick Talevski has called it a "hard rock anthem" on his book Rock Obituaries: Knocking On Heaven's Door. The Independent named the song at tenth in the list "Gold Dust: Glam rock's top 10 singles."

Use in popular media

The song has been used in movies including Scream, Dazed and Confused, Rock 'n' Roll High School, and I Love You, Beth Cooper.
In 2004, the song was also used in a Staples television commercial for the back to school retail period in which Alice appeared as himself. A young girl with black hair, obviously disappointed that school is starting soon, says, "I thought you said 'School's out forever.'" Alice replies, "No, no, no... the song goes, 'School's out for summer.' Nice try though." The song was also used in a 2009 Arby's commercial. In 2018, a commercial for Phoenix-based Desert Financial Credit Union used the song, as Alice is from Phoenix.
The title of the 1992 Degrassi movie, School's Out, comes from this song.
In 2012, the song was featured in musical TV series Glee, episode "Choke", in its third season. The song was performed by Mark Salling as his character Puck.
The Simpsons episode "Kamp Krusty" had an excerpt of the song's refrain used during Bart's dream sequence with the destruction of Springfield Elementary on its last day of school before summer vacation, and in the episode "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can", Principal Skinner sings his own version - "School's back in session, let's begin our lesson!"
Cooper performs the song as the closing act of his episode on The Muppet Show where he dances with various large Muppet monsters who gleefully act out his lyrics, including causing numerous explosions. The song was also performed in the finale of the ninth season of American Idol by Idol contestants and Cooper himself.
The live version from Classicks is featured as downloadable content in Rock Band 3.

Personnel

Daphne and Celeste version

Pop duo Daphne and Celeste released a cover of the song in 2000, although much of this cover is original, in a pop-rap style. The chorus is based on that in Alice Cooper's version, and some other elements of it have been retained as well. The single is remixed from the version released on their album We Didn't Say That!, removing a prominent synthesizer line from the chorus among other, more minor changes. The B-side, "The Camp Song", was the only non-album D&C song available until the release of their fourth single almost 15 years later. School's Out was their first and only single released in Japan.
;Track listing
  1. "School's Out"
  2. "The Camp Song"
  3. "School's Out"
  4. "School's Out"

    Gwar version

"School's Out" was also covered by the band Gwar. It was the first release from their 2006 album Beyond Hell. It was released as a digital download through services such as iTunes and eMusic, and as a promotional CD sent to radio stations. The band has stated in several interviews that they had not intended on recording a cover song for Beyond Hell, but the record company insisted that they do a cover that might get some airplay, and would be accessible to a wider audience than their first choice for a single, "Eighth Lock".

Other covers

Weekly singles charts

Year-end charts