Song Lyric Sunday. School Days.

Jim Adams

Its Sunday and time for Song Lyric Sunday hosted as ever by Jim Adams. This week November 28, 2021 – School, College, Education, Class, Degree was suggested by Paula of Light Motifs II.

Well, Brick in the wall covers it all and the words teachers, classrooms, class, education and school are all in the lyrics. Great song and I have great memories of those times. Our eldest was coming up eighteen and huge Pink Floyd fan. We had a party for him and his cake was a black and white brink wall, just like the album cover, I made a small white brick sized cake and labeled it ‘Just another Brick’. He loved it and so did his mates.

“Another Brick in the Wall” is a three-part composition on Pink Floyd‘s 1979 rock opera The Wall, written by bassist Roger Waters. “Part 2”, a protest song against rigid and abusive schooling, features a children’s choir. At the suggestion of producer Bob Ezrin, Pink Floyd added elements of disco.

“Part 2” was released as a single, Pink Floyd’s first in the UK since “Point Me at the Sky” (1968). It sold over four million copies worldwide. It was nominated for a Grammy Award and was number 384 on Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time“.

The three parts of “Another Brick in the Wall” appear on Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera album The Wall. During “Part 1”, the protagonist, Pink, begins building a metaphorical wall around himself following the death of his father. In “Part 2”, traumas involving his overprotective mother and abusive schoolteachers become bricks in the wall. Following a violent breakdown in “Part 3”, Pink dismisses everyone he knows as “just bricks in the wall”.

Bassist Roger Waters wrote “Part 2” as a protest against rigid schooling, particularly boarding schools. “Another Brick in the Wall” appears in the film based on the album. In the “Part 2” sequence, children enter a school and march in unison through a meat grinder, becoming “putty-faced” clones, before rioting and burning down the school.

So here are couple of other songs on the subject! Just because I like them 😃

Kelsea Nicole Ballerini (born September 12, 1993) is an American country pop singer and songwriter. She began songwriting as a child and signed with Black River Entertainment in 2014,^] releasing her debut studio album the following year, The First Time. Her second studio album, Unapologetically, followed in 2017. Ballerini’s first two albums have accounted for seven charted songs on the Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. She has four No. 1 singles on the latter, starting with her debut single “Love Me Like You Mean It”, which made her the first female artist to send a debut single to the top of that chart since Carrie Underwood in 2006. It was followed by “Dibs” and “Peter Pan“, whose peaks also made her the first female country artist to send her first three singles to the top of that chart since Wynonna Judd. Ballerini’s fourth No. 1 single is “Legends“. Her third and fourth studio albums, Kelsea and Ballerini, were both released in 2020.

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I really like Regina Specktor, she was introduced to me by youngest son , who incidentally has introduced me to some great singer songwriters.

Regina Ilyinichna Spektor (Russian)Регинa Ильинична Спектор, IPA: [rʲɪˈɡʲinə ˈspʲɛktər]; born February 18, 1980) is a Russian-American singer, songwriter, and pianist.

After self-releasing her first three records and gaining popularity in New York City’s independent music scenes, particularly the anti-folk scene centered on New York City’s East Village, Spektor signed with Sire Records in 2004 and began achieving greater mainstream recognition. After giving her third album a major label re-release, Sire released Spektor’s fourth album, Begin to Hope, which achieved a Gold certification by the RIAA. Her following two albums, Far and What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, each debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200. 2016’s Remember Us to Life peaked at 23 on the Billboard 200.

Mayor Bill de Blasio proclaimed June 11, 2019, Regina Spektor Day in New York City. Spektor was also inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame on May 18, 2019, by Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr.

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I chose the last one as it’s just such a mash up of so many genres and I really like it.

“Graduation (Friends Forever)” (also titled “Friends Forever (Graduation)“) is a song by American pop singer Vitamin C, released as the third single from her self-titled debut studio album (1999). Vitamin C wrote the song as a response to how many friends drift apart soon after graduation from high school. Josh Deutsch co-wrote the song with her and also produced the track alongside Garry Hughes. The song is partly orchestrated, featuring a string arrangement based on Pachelbel’s Canon in D and a vocal appearance from the NYC All-City Chorus. One version of the song contains student interviews from the Class of 2000 of Lyndhurst High School in New Jersey.

Happy Sunday Everyone 💜.

Bonus track by Police!

“Don’t Stand So Close to Me” is a hit song by the rock band The Police, released in September 1980 as the lead single from their third album Zenyatta Mondatta. It concerns a teacher who has a sexual relationship with a student, which in turn is discovered.

The music and lyrics of the song were written by the lead singer of The Police, Sting. The song deals with the mixed feelings of lust, fear and guilt that a school teacher has for a student and the fallout when the inappropriate sexual relationship is discovered by other adults. The line Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov alludes to Vladimir Nabokov‘s novel Lolita, which covers somewhat similar issues. The line was criticised for rhyming shake and cough with Nabokov. Sting replied, “I’ve used that terrible, terrible rhyme technique a few times.”

Before joining The Police, Sting had previously worked as an English teacher. His recollection was that he’d “been through the business of having 15-year-old girls fancying me – and my really fancying them! How I kept my hands off them I don’t know.” He referred to the song’s story progression as “the teacher, the open page, the virgin, the rape in the car, getting the sack.”

In 1993, however, he said of the song’s inspiration, “You have to remember we were blond bombshells at the time and most of our fans were young girls so I started role playing a bit. Let’s exploit that.” In a 2001 interview for the concert DVD …All This Time, Sting denied that the song is autobiographical.