'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' 'You take a deep breath and you walk through the doors,' she sings. But it starts with a richly detailed verse about that all-important first day of your freshman year at high school. 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. Alice Cooper, 'School's Out'Ĭooper'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.' 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. 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.

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.

Struggle session theme song