Pink Floyd – Another Brick In The Wall
About The Song
“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 corporal punishment and rigid and abusive schooling, features a children’s choir. At the suggestion of producer Bob Ezrin, Pink Floyd added elements of disco.
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd wrote this song about his views on formal education, which were framed during his time at the Cambridgeshire School for Boys. He hated his grammar school teachers and felt they were more interested in keeping the kids quiet than in teaching them. The wall refers to the emotional barrier Waters built around himself because he wasn’t in touch with reality. The bricks in the wall are the events in his life that propelled him to build this proverbial wall around himself – his school teacher was just another brick in the wall.
Waters told Mojo, December 2009, that the song is meant to be satirical. He explained: “You couldn’t find anybody in the world more pro-education than me. But the education I went through in boys’ grammar school in the ’50s was very controlling and demanded rebellion. The teachers were weak and therefore easy targets. The song is meant to be a rebellion against errant government, against people who have power over you, who are wrong. Then it absolutely demanded that you rebel against that.”
“Part 2” was released as a single, Pink Floyd’s first in the United Kingdom since “Point Me at the Sky” (1968). It sold over four million copies worldwide and topped singles charts in fourteen countries, including in the United Kingdom and the United States. It was nominated for a Grammy Award and was ranked number 384 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
