Song · Rough Trade
“High School Confidential” by Rough Trade
From the album Avoid Freud (1980)
“High School Confidential” by Rough Trade appears on 1 radio countdown from 1 station in 1999. It was first released in 1980 on the album Avoid Freud. Its best result is #379 on the CFNY Top 1002 Songs of All-Time (November 1999). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #4,974 alternative song of all time.
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"High School Confidential" gave Canadian new wave band Rough Trade their breakthrough, a Top 40 hit at home in 1980, and it's still the song they're best known for. It's from Avoid Freud on True North, written by Carole Pope and Kevan Staples, and Gene Martynec's production helped win him the Juno for Producer of the Year.
It lifts its title from the 1958 movie but not the movie's plot, and it's no Jerry Lee Lewis cover either. Pope plays a student fixated on a classmate, a bombshell who seems to be carrying on with grown men, the principal included, and sizes her up against '50s pin-ups Mamie Van Doren, Anita Ekberg and Dagmar, pining all the while. The narrator's sex is never stated; Pope later said she wrote it as a lesbian, from her own point of view, and kept it ambiguous on purpose.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 379 | CFNY 102.1 The Edge | CFNY Top 1002 Songs of All-Time (November 1999) | 1002 |
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