Another Brick in the Wall

"Another Brick in the Wall" is a three-part composition on Pink Floyd's 1979 album The Wall, written by the 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 the producer, Bob Ezrin, Pink Floyd added elements of disco.
"Part 2" was Pink Floyd's first UK single since "Point Me at the Sky" (1968). It sold more than four million copies worldwide and topped singles charts in 14 countries, including the UK and the US. 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".
The three parts of "Another Brick in the Wall" appear on Pink Floyd's 1979 rock opera album The Wall. They are essentially one verse each, although Part 2 sees its own verse sung twice: once by Floyd members, and the second time by the guest choir along with Waters and Gilmour. During "Part 1", the protagonist, Pink, begins building a metaphorical wall around himself following the death of his father. In "Part 2", traumas involving his overprotective mother and abusive schoolteachers become bricks in the wall. Following a violent breakdown in "Part 3", Pink dismisses everyone he knows as "just bricks in the wall."
Bassist Roger Waters wrote "Part 2" as a protest against rigid schooling, particularly boarding schools. "Another Brick in the Wall" appears in the film based on the album. In the "Part 2" sequence, children enter a school and march in unison through a meat grinder, becoming "putty-faced" clones, before rioting and burning down the school.
At the suggestion of the producer Bob Ezrin, Pink Floyd added elements of disco, which was popular at the time. According to the guitarist, David Gilmour:
Gilmour recorded his guitar solo using a 1955 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top guitar with P-90 pickups. The American session guitarist Lee Ritenour said in a 2024 interview that Ezrin had him record some ideas for the solo, as Pink Floyd could not decide how to end it. Though his parts were not used, he said he detected his influence in the last bars of Gilmour's solo.
Despite his reservations about the disco element, Gilmour felt the final song sounded like Pink Floyd. When Ezrin heard the song with a disco beat, he was convinced it could become a hit, but felt it needed to be longer, with two verses and two choruses. The band resisted, saying they did not release singles; Waters told him: "Go ahead and waste your time doing silly stuff."
While the band members were away, Ezrin edited the takes into an extended version. He also had the engineer Nick Griffiths record children singing the verse at Islington Green School, close to Pink Floyd's studio. Griffiths was instructed to record only two or three children. Inspired by a Todd Rundgren album featuring an audience in each stereo channel, he suggested recording a school choir. The school allotted only 40 minutes for the recording.
Alun Renshaw, the head of music at the school, was enthusiastic, and said later: "I wanted to make music relevant to the kids – not just sitting around listening to Tchaikovsky. I thought the lyrics were great – 'We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control' ... I just thought it would be a wonderful experience for the kids." The children's choir in the recording featured 23 students, who practised for about a week to prepare. Renshaw hid the lyrics from the headteacher, Margaret Maden, fearing she might stop the recording. Maden said: "I was only told about it after the event, which didn't please me. But on balance it was part of a very rich musical education."
Renshaw and the children spent a week practising before he took them to a recording studio near the school. According to Ezrin, when he played the children's vocals to Waters, "There was a total softening of his face, and you just knew that he knew it was going to be an important record." Waters said: "It was great—exactly the thing I expected from a collaborator."
The children of Islington School received tickets to a Pink Floyd concert, an album and a single. Though the school received a payment of £1,000, there was no arrangement for royalties for the children. Following a change to UK copyright law in 1996, they became eligible for royalties from broadcasts. After the royalties agent Peter Rowan traced the choir members through the social network service Friends Reunited and other means, they successfully lodged a claim for royalties with the Performing Artists' Media Rights Association in 2004.
"Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" was released as a single, Pink Floyd's first in the UK since "Point Me at the Sky" (1968). It was also the Christmas number one of 1979 and the final number one of the decade in the UK. It remained at the top until mid-January, in the process also becoming the first UK number of the 1980s. In the US, it reached number 57 on the disco chart. The single sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Cash Box described it as a "catchy but foreboding selection, with its ominously steady drum work and angry lyrics." Critic Mike Cormack said "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" was a "magnificent achievement: its catchy rhythm undercutting the darkness of the song’s theme, the irony of its chorus belying the acidulous disdain of the lyric, Waters’ quality as a wordsmith on display with the excellent phrase ‘dark sarcasm’, and the simplicity of its structure giving it a tight focus."
The song won Waters the 1983 British Academy Award for Best Original Song for its appearance in the Wall film. "Part 2" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Rock Duo or Group. It appeared at number 384 on Rolling Stone's 2010 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
The lyrics attracted controversy. The Inner London Education Authority described the song as "scandalous", and according to Renshaw, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher "hated it". Renshaw said, "There was a political knee-jerk reaction to a song that had nothing to do with the education system. It was [Waters'] reflections on his life and how his schooling was part of that." The single, as well as the album The Wall, were banned in South Africa in 1980 after it was adopted by supporters of a nationwide school boycott protesting instituted racial inequities in education under apartheid.
Personnel, according to The Pink Floyd Encyclopedia.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
A live version of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" with Cyndi Lauper on vocals, recorded on 21 July 1990 at Potsdamer Platz, was released as a single on 10 September 1990 to promote The Wall – Live in Berlin. The B-side was the live version of "Run Like Hell" performed with Scorpions at the same concert.
In promotion of The Wall – Live in Berlin a new studio version was recorded by Roger Waters & The Bleeding Heart Band that was released on promo compilation titled The Wall Berlin '90 featuring Pink Floyd and Roger Waters solo recordings.
Another live version appeared on Waters' album In the Flesh – Live, integrated between "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" and "Mother" as on the original album, but with a reprise of the first verse ending the song.
For later shows, Waters usually employed local school choirs to perform the song with him (as can be seen on Roger Waters: The Wall). From 2011 to 2013, Waters added an acoustic coda called "The Ballad of Jean Charles de Menezes".
The American nu metal band Korn covered all three parts, along with the Wall song "Goodbye Cruel World", for the 2004 compilation album Greatest Hits, Vol. 1. It was released as a promotional single and reached number 37 on the Modern Rock chart and number 12 on the Mainstream Rock chart. A live music video was released, directed by Bill Yukich. Will Levith of Ultimate Classic Rock called Korn's cover "one of the worst covers of a classic rock song of all time". Jason Birchmeier of AllMusic described it as "overwrought, yet enticingly so".