{"id":401475,"date":"2026-02-01T00:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T00:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/401475\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T00:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T00:25:08","slug":"alice-cooper-picks-the-song-that-will-be-remembered-for-100-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/401475\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Cooper picks the song that will be remembered for “100 years”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alice<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Sven Mandel)<\/p>\n

Sat 31 January 2026 19:00, UK <\/p>\n

When counterculture boomed in the 1960s<\/a>, a whole host of post-war parents clutched their pearls in fear of what felt like an overwhelming change.<\/p>\n

What started with a modest wobble of the knee from Elvis in the mid-1950s ended in a declaration that The Beatles were more important than Jesus Christ<\/a> from John Lennon only a decade later. The kids were rebelling against the norms set before them, and music was the tool through which they were doing that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While The Beatles captured that spirit through the esoterica of their psychedelic lyrics, The Who decided that a true anthem was required to address the state of the nation. Their breakout 1965 hit \u2018My Generation\u2019<\/a> was a stirring yet simple soundtrack for a legion of kids, staring in the face of their parents who just couldn\u2019t quite comprehend that changing make-up of their children, buoyed by a culture of liberated creativity and disillusioned by a history of conflict. <\/p>\n

In that crowd of children was a young Vincent Damon Furnier, later known as\u00a0Alice Cooper<\/a>. Upon hearing \u2018My Generation\u2019, Cooper not only made sense of the feelings that stirred within him, but also used them to write a track aimed to similarly rebel against societal norms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe understood what an anthem was after hearing \u2018My Generation,\u2019\u201d Cooper said. \u201c[A song\u2019s] an anthem because 100 years from now, a 16-year-old kid hears that song and goes \u2018Oh, he\u2019s talking about me!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper cited that feeling as the catalyst for writing \u2018School\u2019s Out\u2019. His rock and roll hit took a similarly straightforward approach to lyrics of teenage rebellion and centred them around a hook ready-made for children to scream back at their teachers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of penning \u2018School\u2019s Out\u2019, Cooper recalled, \u201cEverybody hated school. We thought, if you can capture the last three minutes of the last day of school before summer vacation, that would be a joyous song.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cWhen I heard \u2018My Generation\u2019 by The Who, I thought\u2026Okay, this is an anthem, because every kid is going to relate to that song\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other anthem like that was \u2018I Get Around\u2019 by the Beach Boys,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd I thought, what is the common denominator for every teenager? For me, it was the last three minutes of the last day of school\u2026When that bell rings, you\u2019re done for three months. You\u2019re free.\u201c<\/p>\n

Cooper\u2019s take is a little more tongue-in-cheek than The Who\u2019s and removes the sort of social anger that threads the lyrics of the British band. Where The Who grapple mortality in the face of societal change by singing \u201cI hope I die before I get old,\u201d Cooper captures simple schoolground rebellion with \u201cNo more pencils, no more books \/ No more teacher\u2019s dirty looks, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, albeit a touch weaker, Cooper\u2019s anthem continued stoking the fire of musical revolution that existed throughout the second half of the 20th century. He snatched the baton from Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, and carried it through the 1970s and 1980s, where real cultural rebellion was needed even more than in the swinging sixties.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Sven Mandel) Sat 31 January 2026 19:00, UK When counterculture boomed in the 1960s,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[16317,96,128,9738,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-401475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-alice-cooper","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-the-who","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}