"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 only single on April 26, 1972. "School's Out" was Alice Cooper's biggest international hit and it has been regarded as their signature song[1] and reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, number three in the Canadian RPM 100 Singles chart, number two on the Irish Singles Chart and number one on the UK Singles Chart.
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."[3]
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.[4] 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.
"School's Out" became Alice Cooper's first major hit single, reaching number seven on the US Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart and propelling the album to number two on the Billboard 200 pop albums chart. It was the highest-charting single for the Alice Cooper band, and its number-seven peak position was matched only by "Poison" among Cooper's solo efforts. Billboard ranked it as the number-75 song for 1972.[5] In Canada, the single went to number three on the RPM 100 Singles Chart[6] following the album reaching number one.[7] In Britain, the song went to number one 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.
Upon the release of the single, Record World said: "Heavy seasonal rocker will have Alice's hordes of fans swinging all summer. Their best since 'Eighteen,' and a super hit."[8]
The Season 4 premiere episode of The Simpsons, "Kamp Krusty", features the song in which Bart Simpson dreams that it is the last day of school and the students destroy the place.
In 2004, the song was also used in a Staples television commercial for the back to school retail period in which Cooper appeared as himself.[16]
The Swedish pop group A-Teens released a cover version of the song, which features guest vocals by Cooper. This version appeared on their studio albums Pop 'til You Drop! and New Arrival.
Pop duo Daphne and Celeste released a cover in 2000, which charted at number 96 in Australia and number 12 in the UK.
For his 2024 album Solid Rock Revival, Cooper changed the lyrics for a kid-friendly song called "School's In".[19]
^Rice, Jo; Tim Rice; Paul Gambaccini; Mike Read (1979). The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles (2nd ed.). Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Superlatives Ltd. p. 56. ISBN0-900424-99-0.