With the weather warming up and movies about laser-guns filling the multiplexes, all signs suggest that, at long last, it's late spring and/or early summer, depending on your geographic position. (Note to readers in the southern hemisphere: Please put this article aside for six months.) This time of year means that young people's thoughts inevitably turn to one activity: making mix-CDs and playlists themed around the school year that just ended.
But just how good are these mixlists? Our studies arrived at the alarming answer "Not very." In fact, 87.5 percent of the mixlists studied in the A.V. Club labs reveal the presence of Alice Cooper's "School's Out." True, it's a great song, but come on, how on-the-nose can you get? Put some thought into it, people. And let's not even talk about "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)."
In the interest of improving our readers' mixing abilities, The A.V. Club presents this education-themed mixlist. Remember, as always, this is the definitive mixlist of its kind, tested using secret scientific methods, at least some of which involve lab coats and that machine that creates electrical currents between two wires. (You know the one. It's in all those movies.)
1. "Walkin' Home From School," Gene Vincent (available on Capitol Collectors Series: Gene Vincent)
Gene Vincent was the quintessential rockabilly bad boy, but you wouldn't know it from this tender ode to high-school love. Here, school's a mighty fine place that primarily exists as a place to leave from, hand-in-hand with a pretty girl.
2. Nirvana, "School" (available on Bleach)
On the other hand, Kurt Cobain needs just 15 words to convey complete contempt not only for high school itself, but for a life of social interactions. (Sludgy, evocative guitars have something to do with it too.) His cry of "No recess!" will sound sillier as the years pass, but there'll always be new graduates to feel its burn.
3. The Smiths, "The Headmaster Ritual" (available on Meat Is Murder)
Mr. Morrissey articulates the horrors of organized education—beatings, bad jokes, a burning feeling of confinement—with the oddly jaunty melancholy that characterized The Smiths' finest moments. It's deadly serious, yet almost flippant: The "bruises bigger than dinner plates" have healed, but smart anger remains.
4. "Weird At My School," Pixies (available on The Complete B-Sides)
"You know I fantasize that I have sex with the nuns at my school," Black Francis sings on this almost-ran from the Doolittle era. Um, no. But thanks.
5. "High In High School," Chainsaw Kittens (available on Flipped Out In Singapore)
A weird mix of early-'90s grunge and late-'80s glam metal, Chainsaw Kittens came from Oklahoma, and sported a lead singer not afraid to wear makeup or sound like Iggy Pop imitating Bang Tango. The hybrid never found a way to thrive, but it proved remarkably adept at capturing middle-American decadence, which it did best on this screechy track about getting dazed and confused between classes.
6. "School Days," Al Green (available on Al Green Explores Your Mind)
There's a tear lurking behind Green's trademark delivery here as he begs a lover—as smoothly as possible, of course—to return their love to a more innocent time. Whether his plea will work remains an open question at the end of the song.
7. "School Days," Loudon Wainwright III (available on The Atlantic Recordings)
The first song from Loudon Wainwright III's first album, "School Days" reveals why he got lumped in with the "new Dylan" camp in the early '70s. But Dylan was never as self-deprecating as Wainwright is here, while recalling a past as a phony-sounding teen rebel, a "blaspheming, booted, blue-jeaned baby boy" well aware of the fringe benefits of a striking a countercultural pose.
8. "Middle School Frown," Josh Rouse (available on Nashville)
On a rare look at the difficult junior-high years, when the pressure to conform claims as many victims as acne, Rouse recalls selling out an offbeat, new-wave-loving friend in the interest of popularity. With its chorus of "you held your head high," he makes it clear whom he considers to be the hero these days.
9. "High School Confidential," Jerry Lee Lewis (available on The Sun Records Collection)
Lewis was probably the kind of high-school student who never went to class but showed up at every football game and dance, a flask strapped to his leg. This frenzied rock standard brings a little bit of the local roadhouse to the school gym, as Lewis bellows "boppin' at the high-school hop," and his classmates try to get as much bump and grind as possible in before the chaperones spot them. What they start on the dance floor, they'll finish in the back seat of a car later that night.
10. Ramones, "Rock 'N' Roll High School" (available on End Of The Century)
Who doesn't dream of ditching class to go see the Ramones play? The lyrics to "Rock 'N' Roll High School" get a little angsty ("I hate the teachers and the principal"), but they serve the greater escapist fantasy: "Fun, fun, fun, fun / Oh, baby."
11. "The Lineup," C-Rayz Walz, Wordsworth, J-Treds, Thirstin Howl III, Vast Aire, MF Doom (available on Ravipops)
On this monster posse cut, Def Jux's C-Rayz Walz invites his guests to relive their school days. Wordsworth leads off by recounting the havoc his impromptu rhyme recitals caused throughout the schoolyard, but habitual track-stealer Vast Aire graduates as the valedictorian. Directing all wack MCs to report immediately to the short, short bus, Vast Aire taunts: "Teacher said, 'You too loose in the head / You don't get a graham cracker, you go straight to bed / Playtime's over, go straight to special ed / Play with Simon, do as he says.'"
12. "Prom Theme," Fountains Of Wayne (available on Utopia Parkway)
Occasionally, a prom committee will choose a name like "Twilight In Paradise" or "The Best Years Of Our Lives" without recognizing the bitter subtext that proms can be about putting the good times to rest. Fountains Of Wayne, on the other hand, understands that perfectly on this bleakly funny ballad.
13. "High School Dance Hit," Rex (available on Rex)
A female voice mumbles, "It's not working out," and two now-ex-lovers shuffle along to a slowcore waltz, making awkward conversation beneath the twinkling lights. The girl is "carefully plotting her words as if they were nails," while the boy stares numbly ahead, his thoughts reflected by the band's dull echo and twang. This couple won't be dancing together anymore.
14. Third Eye Blind, "Graduate" (available on Third Eye Blind)
"Hey, this is kinda good, who is it?… Oh, they suck." And Third Eye Blind does mostly suck, but the same album that spawned the deadly virus "Semi-Charmed Life" also features the band's actually-pretty-good, get-tough blast about moving on in life. The band didn't graduate, but this song gets better than a C-.
15. "Days Of Graduation," Drive-By Truckers (available on Southern Rock Opera)
Drive-By Truckers kick off an epic double-album-length meditation on rebel pride, racism, and the morbidity of rock heroism with this sardonic spoken-word piece about a drunken high-school kid who suffers a fatal wreck the night before graduation. The punch line? When the paramedics arrive, they can still hear "Free Bird" playing on the stereo. "You know, it's a very long song."
16. "Ghost World," Aimee Mann (available on Bachelor No. 2)
Inspired by Daniel Clowes' graphic novel of the same name, Mann's song settles into the same gray space between graduation and the rest of your life. Not sure what to do when all her friends are "acting weird or way too cool," the protagonist has nothing to do but ride her bike and feel bad about what's been lost already and what's sure to keep slipping further way.
17. "My Old School," Steely Dan (available on Countdown To Ecstasy)
For one song, at least, the aloof jazz-pop of Steely Dan and the sprawling rockabilly boogie of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band intersect, in a near-perfect example of why the radio was so fun to listen to in 1973. As for the lyrics, they're the usual Donald Fagen litany of lurid snapshots and decadent mysteries, though the refrain "I'm never going back to my old school" is fairly clear. You can keep your reunions; Fagen has seen too much to return home.