The song that peaked at the top of the American charts on the Billboard Hot 100, per Stereogum, was “Another Brick in the Wall Part II,” whose video (which was actually part of the movie “The Wall”) featured British schoolkids being fed into a meat grinder. Very sobering imagery. It was a denouncing of the British school system. The song, which seamlessly segued in from “The Happiest Days of Our Lives,” a song about the cruelty of teachers, had a disco funk of sort. Fans of the band loved the lyrics, especially the “We don’t need no education” part. This part of the song surely vexed teachers over the years.
Roger Waters wrote the song, via Society of Rock, by drawing on his own experience growing up and his encounters with British schoolteachers. Surely none of them were as cartoonishly evil as the headmaster in “The Wall,” who barked, “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” Waters did say in an interview that while he supported education, he found the experience in the 1950’s to be rigid and controlling, which begged for people to rebel.
“Another Brick in the Wall Part II” stayed at that position for four weeks. The song remains popular to this day, and Waters is so protective of the anti-authority message of the lyrics that he forbade Facebook from using it in an ad, per Rolling Store. We certainly don’t need no thought control, either.
