The Rebellious Meaning Behind Alice Cooper’s Signature Hit “School’s Out”

There’s no better soundtrack for the last day of school than Alice Cooper’s hit, “School’s Out.” Released in April 1972 as the first and only single off the album of the same name, “School’s Out” took the rock king’s career to new heights. It’s hard to imagine his musical repertoire without it, as more than five decades later, it still remains his biggest hit. Below, we explore the meaning behind “School’s Out.”

Meaning Behind the Song

Cooper was aiming for a specific feeling when he and bandmates Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith wrote the song that rebels against classroom order and the teachers, principals and other personnel who enforce it. He says it was partially inspired by The Who’s classic 1965 hit, “My Generation,” about outsiders trying to find their place in society.

“I think the prototype for ‘School’s Out’ is ‘My Generation,’ a song that speaks to every generation,” Cooper explains to AZ Central. “I just took it and said, ‘Is it possible to capture the last three minutes of the last day of school before summer vacation?’ There’s no other moment as joyous as that, except for maybe Christmas morning. I said, ‘If we could just capture the energy of that, now that would be a hit.’”

The shock rock legend says that they tried to write the lyrics from a comical perspective, similar to what fellow rock icon Chuck Berry did in such songs as “School Days” that spoke to the grind of the typical school day for American students. The proof is in such lyrics as, And we got no intelligence/We can’t even think of a word that rhymes and the well-known chorus, School’s out for summer/School’s out forever/School’s been blown to pieces.

“All you had to do was write what everybody thought about school. By the end of the chorus, school’s been blown to pieces,” Cooper continues. “That certainly made it more subversive, but I meant it metaphorically. If I never see that school again — until, you know, three months from now — it might as well be blown to pieces. I tried to write the lyrics to be funny. Like Chuck Berry. Have a punchline. And I made sure the grammar was all absolutely wrong.”

The melody is defined by a guitar riff by Buxton that Cooper says the rest of the song was written around. “Once Glen got the riff and we decided, ‘Well, it’s gonna be about that final school bell,’ we were off and running,” adds Dunaway. “It was one of those songs that felt like the creative gods just dropped a gift in our lap.”

More than a decade into his career, Cooper scored his first mainstream hit with “School’s Out” when it reached No. 7 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. The song’s success impacted the album itself, which reached a peak of No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The album has been certified platinum by the RIAA for sales of more than one million copies.

Photo: Courtesy of Atom Splitter PR