30 songs about school: Alice Cooper, Ramones, Taylor Swift, The Beatles

Now that the kids are eyeing the end of the school year, here's a playlist of 30 classics devoted to "school days," as Chuck Berry put it on a timeless 1957 single.

You could say Berry's song was a "textbook example" of this type of song, in fact — if you're the type of person who would say that sort of thing.

Whatever your relationship with school is, chances are you'll hear some of your own experiences in at least a handful of these songs, from the Beach Boys' celebration of school spirit to Taylor Swift recalling how her first day as a high school freshman felt.

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Alice Cooper, 'School's Out'

Cooper's greatest hit sets the tone with a punkish guitar riff as memorable as anything the kids had heard since "I'm Eighteen," following "School's out for summer" with "School's out forever" because, as the singer reveals in a textbook example of knowing your audience, "School's been blown to pieces." Having school kids join the taunting bridge of "No more pencils / No more books" was a brilliant idea, if not as brilliant as "We got no class and we got no principles / And we got no innocence / We can't even think of a word that rhymes."

Ramones, 'Rock 'n' Roll High School'

With Phil Spector producing, the kings of U.S. punk approach this song with the youthful abandon of actual schoolkids, filtering a classic old-school rock-and-roll vibe through buzzsaw guitars. Meanwhile, Joey Ramone sets the tone with an opening verse that effectively sums up the high-school experience for young punks everywhere: "Well I don't care about history / 'Cause that's not where I wanna be / I just wanna have some kicks / I just wanna get some chicks." This song was made to order for a very silly must-see movie of the same name.

Chuck Berry, 'School Days'

In which the poet laureate of pre-Bob Dylan rock and roll takes young listeners through what he feels is a typical school day, learning American history and practical math while dealing with the botheration of having a guy who won't leave you alone sit behind you in class and a teacher who "don't know how mean she looks." Two months after being released as a single, it served as the opening track on a classic debut titled "After School Session." The single peaked at No. 3 and topped the Billboard R&B chart.

Taylor Swift, 'Fifteen'

This wistful ballad finds the singer looking back while still in her teens yet coming away with surprisingly grown-up reflections on the battle scars of young romance. But it starts with a richly detailed verse about that all-important first day of your freshman year at high school. "You take a deep breath and you walk through the doors," she sings. "It's the morning of your very first day / You say 'Hi' to your friends you ain't seen in a while / Try and stay out of everybody's way / It's your freshman year and you're gonna be here for the next four years in this town / Hoping one of those senior boys will wink at you and say 'You know I haven't seen you around before.'"

The Kinks, 'The Hard Way'

With "Schoolboys in Disgrace," the Kinks' Ray Davies devoted an entire concept album to the education system, setting the scene with the wistful nostalgia of "Schooldays" before concluding, nine songs later, that "even aborigines need education." But "The Hard Way" advanced to the head of the class in part because it was blessed with the kind of guitar riff that defined their early hits, only faster, and in part because the lyrics, sung from the perspective of a disillusioned teacher, played so well to Davies' strengths ("I'm wasting my vocation teaching you to write neat / When you're only fit to sweep the streets").

The Jackson 5, 'ABC'

This chart-topping smash finds the Jackson 5 schooling a young girl in the fundamentals they're convinced her education somehow failed to cover. "Reading, writing, arithmetic are the branches of the learning tree," she's told. "But without the roots of love everyday girl/Your education ain't complete." She may have learned I before E except after C, but the lesson plan here is "as simple as do re mi / A B C / 1 2 3 / Baby, you and me."

Pink Floyd, 'Another Brick in the Wall'

There's no nostalgia for school days to offset Roger Waters' problems with the education system. Consider the opening lyrics: "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom / Teacher leave them kids alone." "The Wall" includes three versions of the song. The version chosen for the single, which would give Pink Floyd their only No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100, is fueled by slinky funk guitar and disco bass, a timelier sound for the end of the '70s than the other two versions. The children's chorus (on a song co-produced by the same guy who produced the children's chorus on that Alice Cooper single) is a nice touch.

Julie Brown, 'The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun'

A spot-on parody of the classic teen tragedy songs of the '50s, this novelty hit from the '80s finds a Valley Girl sharing the details of her best friend Debi's killing spree at the homecoming dance just after being crowned. No, really. In the '80s, this still qualified as humor because it was, in fact, too soon. She's eventually taken out by the police and in her dying breath reveals that she did it for "Johnny." Of course, by that point the entire glee club has been killed, which Brown shrugs off with "No big loss." Best line: "God, my best friend's on a shooting spree / Stop it, Debi, you're embarrassing me."

Larry Williams, 'Bad Boy'

This horn-fueled R&B gem was given a much wider audience years later when the Beatles recorded the version featured on the U.S. album, "Beatles VI." It's a spirited ode to the new kid in school who's constantly getting in trouble, Williams comically screeching "Now Junior, behave yourself" at the end of each chorus. As to what sort of mischief the bad boy gets into here, it's strictly kids stuff. "He puts thumbtacks in teacher's chair / Put chewing come in little girl's hair."

The Beach Boys, 'Be True to Your School'

This is all about school rivalry — a celebration of not school so much as "your school." As Mike Love frames the situation in the song's first verse, "When some loud braggart tries to put me down and says his school is great / I tell him right away, 'Now what's the matter buddy / Ain't you heard of my school It's number one in the state.'" The version released as a single (which peaked at No. 6 on Billboard's Hot 100) is the one to beat, blessed with a cheerleader chant by the Blossoms, chanting "rah rah rah rah sis boom bah."

Van Halen, 'Hot for Teacher'

This was the lowest-charting single pulled from "1984," but the video, which showed a teacher stripping, was all over MTV, inspiring a protest by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). The protest centered on the sexually suggestive lyrics and the stripping teacher. But it all seems pretty tame by modern community standards. And David Lee Roth was born to play the lecherous young schoolboy who sings "I think of all the education that I missed / But then my homework was never quite like this."

Rockpile, 'Teacher Teacher'

Where David Lee Roth comes across as a dirty old man stuck in the body of a lovestruck teen, Nick Lowe does more blushing than leering in this far more innocuous student-crush-on-teacher song. Lowe sets the scene with "Young love, teacher's pet / Cheeks flushed, apple red / Ringing you every day / Begging for a word of praise / I've put aside my foolish games / I run and hide and callin' names/ School's out, the bells'll ring / Now's the time to teach me everything."

Donna Summer, 'Love's Unkind'

What would high school be without that crush who never knew you cared? This track from Summer's "I Remember Yesterday" is as nostalgic as the album title, filtering a '60s girl-group sensibility through thumping disco beats. The singer sets the scene with "Well I see him every morning in the schoolyard when the school bell rings / And when he passes in the hallway, well, he doesn't seem to notice me." To make things worse, "He's got a crush on my best friend / But she don't care, 'cause she loves someone else." And it doesn't get any more high school than that.

Mötley Crüe, 'Smokin' in the Boys Room'

Vince Neil was born, it seems, to take the monologue that kickstarts Brownsville Station's boogie-rocking ode to teen rebellion and make it his own. The way he delivers those lines is more cartoonish than the Brownsville version, but that's perfect when the lyrics you're delivering are "Did ya ever seem to have one of those days when everyone is on your case from your teacher all the way down to your best girlfriend?" Also, give the drummer some. Tommy Lee makes it swagger in ways the original only hinted at. It peaked at No. 14, giving Mötley Crüe their first Top 40 hit.

The Beatles, 'Getting Better'

The Beatles weigh in on their own school experiences on this "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" highlight. It's all there in the opening verse, Paul McCartney recalled, "I used to get mad at my school / The teachers who taught me weren't cool / You're holding me down / Turning me round / Filling me up with your rules." And if there's one thing we know about Lennon, it's that rules were not his thing. Those first two lines, by the way, are offset by a chirpier second vocal countering with "No, I can't complain" in falsetto.

Sam Cooke, 'Wonderful World'

This early soul classic finds Cooke using subjects he never quite mastered at school as a yardstick against which to measure more important truths. To wit: "Don't know much about history / Don't know much biology / Don't know much about a science book / Don't know much about the French I took / But I do know that I love you / And I know that if you love me, too / What a wonderful world this would be." There's also one entire verse devoted to the things he did not learn in math class.

Regina Spektor, 'School is Out'

Clear at the opposite end of the happiness spectrum from the similarly titled Alice Cooper song, this sad piano ballad sets the tone with Spektor's weary sigh of "School is out and I walk the empty hallways / I walk alone, alone as always." It only gets sadder from there as she follows a trembling chorus of "Just break me" with a second verse that makes it sounds like she may be a faculty member, staying late because she doesn't want to go home and cook herself dinner or look in the mirror that "swallows me whole."

Jerry Lee Lewis, 'High School Confidential'

This is one of several early rock-and-roll or R&B songs devoted to singing the praises of a high school dance, another great example is Little Richard's "Ready Teddy." In this one, everybody's "boppin' at the high school hop" and Lewis is eager to join them. As he sneers in the opening verse, "You better open up, honey / It's your lover boy me that's a-knockin' / You better listen to me, sugar / All the cats are at the high school rockin'."

The Police, 'Don't Stand So Close to Me'

Coming at the student-crush-on-teacher angle from the opposite direction, Sting, a former teacher, encourages the girl who's crushing on him not to stand so close. In the opening verse, he sings, "Young teacher, the subject of schoolgirl fantasy / She wants him so badly / Knows what she wants to be / Inside her there's longing / This girl's an open page / Book marking, she's so close now / This girl is half his age." So does he act on it? Sting leaves that part open to interpretation, but follows "Wet bus stop, she's waiting / His car is warm and dry" with a scene of him nervously shaking and coughing "just like the old man in that book by Nabokov."

The Coasters, 'Charlie Brown'

This sax-driven R&B hit is a novelty song devoted to the quintessential class clown, the kind of kid who calls the English teacher Daddy-O, setting the tone with "Fe-fe, fi-fi, fo-fo, fum / I smell smoke in the auditorium" and letting Charlie Brown respond to his assorted charges at the end of every chorus with the brilliantly delivered question, "Why's everybody always pickin' on me?"

Fiona Apple, 'Shameika'

This song from 2020's "Fetch the Bolt Cutters" is apparently named for a classmate of Apple's who once consoled the future songwriter after seeing her get laughed at in a scene straight out of "Mean Girls," asking, 'Why are you trying to sit with those girls? You have potential.'" In the song, she reminisces on the drudgery of life at school and her relationship with bullies. "I didn't smile because a smile always seemed rehearsed," she sings. "I wasn't afraid of the bullies and that just made the bullies worse."

The Boomtown Rats, 'I Don't Like Mondays'

OK, this is a dark one, written by Bob Geldof after reading a telex report on the shooting spree of 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer, who fired at children in a school playground at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, killing two adults and injuring eight children and one police officer. "I don't like Mondays" was her explanation. Sample lyric: "And all the playing's stopped in the playground now / She wants to play with the toys a while / And school's out early and soon we'll be learning / And the lesson today is how to die."

Steely Dan, 'My Old School'

In which Donald Fagen explains why he is never going back to his old school, Bard College, where in 1969, he and his girlfriend, Dorothy White, were arrested along with roughly 50 other students, not the least of which was Fagen's bandmate Walter Becker, in a raid by sheriff's deputies. As Fagen recalls in the opening verse with regard to his girlfriend, "Your daddy was quite surprised to find you with the working girls in the county jail / I was smoking with the boys upstairs when I heard about the whole affair."

DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, 'Parents Just Don't Understand'

This old-school hip-hop classic paints a richly detailed portrait of out-of-touch parents sending the Fresh Prince to school with the wrong pair of sneakers and ugly clothes to start the year as a fashion pariah. The Fresh Prince does his best to school his mom in proper '80s school attire. As he raps, "I said, 'This isn't Sha Na Na / Come on, Mom, I'm not Bowzer / Mom, please put back the bell-bottom 'Brady Bunch' trousers / But if you don't want to I can live with that / But you gotta put back the double-knit reversible slacks.'" But his mom won't budge and the first day of school is a fashion fiasco – because, of course, parents just don't understand. The song took home a Grammy for best rap performance in 1989.

The Runaways, 'School Days'

Not to be confused with the Chuck Berry classic of the same name, this "School Days" effortlessly blurs the lines between '70s hard rock and punk as Joan Jett celebrates her misspent youth from the older, wiser vantage point of 18. "Never read a single book," she sings. "Hated homework and the dirty looks / But now I live my life / There's a lot I've seen at 18." By the time she says she "never made the honor roll" and "hated rules," it comes as no surprise. But learning to rhyme "It's a dangerous scene" with "when you're 18" would appear to be a more important skill to nurture in a kid like Jett.

Aerosmith, 'Walk This Way'

"So I took a big chance at the high school dance with a missy who was ready to play." Decades later, it's easy to see how this single inspired a hip-hop rethink by Run-D.M.C. It's just that funky, drawing you in with Joey Kramer's bad-ass beat, which was born to be sampled, and Joe Perry's most enduring contribution to the history of funk guitar. Then Steven Tyler grabs the mic to share his most salacious schoolboy fantasies. "There was three young ladies in the school gym locker when I noticed they was lookin' at me," Tyler sings. And that's after the verse about the cheerleader who doesn't care what you see on the swings at the playground.

The White Stripes, 'We're Going to Be Friends'

This is the White Stripes showing their sensitive side, an understated fingerpicking pattern underscoring Jack White's tale of walking a new friend to school at the start of the school year. "There's dirt on your uniforms / from chasing all the ants and worms," he sings. "We clean up and now it's time to learn." And if playing with the ants and worms along the way suggests that these new friends are younger than the characters in "Walk This Way," for instance, the following verse confirms it: "Numbers, letters, learn to spell / Nouns and books and show and tell / At playtime we will through the ball / Back to class through the hall / Teacher marks our height against the wall." This was used to brilliant effect in "Napoleon Dynamite."

Beastie Boys, '(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)'

This teen-rebellion anthem sets the scene with the Beastie Boys rapping, "You wake up late for school, man, you don't wanna go / You ask you mom, 'Please?' but she still says, 'No!' / You missed two classes and no homework / But your teacher preaches class like you're some kind of jerk." The other verses deal with smoking, porn, teen fashion, hair and rap. But that opening verse is all about the age-old problem of having to go to school before you're old enough to feel like learning anything.

Gwen Stefani, 'Hollaback Girl'

This song was inspired by a Courtney Love quote in an interview with Seventeen. "Being famous is just like being in high school," Love said. "But I’m not interested in being the cheerleader. I’m not interested in being Gwen Stefani. She’s the cheerleader, and I’m out in the smoker’s shed." Stefani's response in the songs and its accompanying video was to playfully own the insult, making it clear that if she is the cheerleader, she's the one leading the cheers, not the ones hollering back.

Stray Cats, '(She's) Sexy & 17'

It starts with Brian Setzer as a schoolboy crowing, "Hey, man, I don't feel like goin' to school noooo more" and follows through with an opening verse that proclaims, "I ain't goin' to school, it starts too early for me / Well, listen, man, I ain't goin' to school no more / It starts much, much too early for me / I don't care about readin', writin', 'rithmetic or history." He's far more interested in cutting class to hook up with little Marie, who's sexy, 17 and acts a little bit obscene.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Twitter.com/EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 30 songs about school: Alice Cooper, Ramones, Taylor Swift, Beatles