"Department of Youth" | ||||
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Single by Alice Cooper | ||||
from the album Welcome to My Nightmare | ||||
B-side | "Some Folks" | |||
Released | February 1975 (UK)
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Genre | Hard rock | |||
Length | 2:50 | |||
Label | Atlantic Records 3280 | |||
Songwriter(s) | Alice Cooper, Dick Wagner, Bob Ezrin | |||
Producer(s) | Bob Ezrin | |||
Alice Cooper singles chronology | ||||
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"Department of Youth" is a song by rock musician Alice Cooper featured on his Welcome to My Nightmare album. [2] The song peaked at No. 67 on The Billboard Hot 100.
Creem said the song, "is a second cousin to "School's Out" with a chorus of child-things sounding like Cooper's dead babies resurrected to sing back-up vocals." [3] NME agreed it was, "School's Out" all over again, complete with demented kiddie choir and watered-down Clockwork Orange braggadoccio." [4]
Melody Maker wrote, "This is typical, a heavy metal Marc Bolan. It's gritty and gruesome, but underneath the yells and screaming arrangement, it's really just a simple, catchy pop song. Don't analyse it, just bop as Alice screeches his way up the chart." [5]
Record World said that "the supreme spokesman for angry young men everywhere is even more vital and exciting here." [6]
Chart (1975) | Peak position |
---|---|
Australia (Kent Music Report) [7] | 7 |
U.S. (Billboard 100) | 67 |
Chart (1975) | Peak position |
---|---|
Australia (Kent Music Report) [7] | 35 |
Pretty Boy Floyd covered the song on their album, Porn Stars . [8]
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer whose career spans over five decades. With a raspy voice and a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions, including pyrotechnics, guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, reptiles, baby dolls, and dueling swords, Cooper is considered by many music journalists and peers to be "The Godfather of Shock Rock". He has drawn equally from horror films, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a macabre and theatrical brand of rock designed to shock audiences.
Billion Dollar Babies is the sixth studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released in March 1973 by Warner Bros. Records. The album became the best selling Alice Cooper record at the time of its release, hit number one on the album charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and went on to be certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album has been retrospectively praised by such critics as Robert Christgau, Greg Prato of AllMusic, and Jason Thompson of PopMatters, but The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) gave the album only two and a half stars.
Neal Smith is an American musician, best known as the drummer for the rock group Alice Cooper from 1967 to 1974. He performed on the group's early albums Pretties for You and Easy Action, their breakout album Love It to Death and the subsequent successful albums Killer, School's Out, and Billion Dollar Babies. The last new studio album with the five original Alice Cooper group members participating in new music was Muscle of Love in 1973. The original group's Greatest Hits studio album was released in 1974. In 2018, a live performance album Live from the Astroturf recorded in 2015 was released, featuring four of the original group members performing eight of their hit songs, with long-time Alice Cooper solo band guitarist and friend Ryan Roxie interplaying lead guitar parts with original group rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, on behalf of original group lead guitarist Glen Buxton, who died in 1997 of pneumonia three weeks before his 50th birthday.
Michael Owen Bruce is an American musician. He is the co-founder, rhythm guitarist, keyboardist and backing vocalist for the rock band Alice Cooper.
Dennis Dunaway is an American musician, best known as the original bass guitarist for the rock band Alice Cooper . He co-wrote some of the band's most notable songs, including "I'm Eighteen" and "School's Out".
Welcome to My Nightmare is the debut solo album by American rock musician Alice Cooper, released on March 11th 1975. It is his only album for the Atlantic Records label in North America; in the rest of the world, it was released on the ABC subsidiary Anchor Records. Welcome to My Nightmare is a concept album. Played in sequence, the songs form a journey through the nightmares of a child named Steven. The album inspired the Alice Cooper: The Nightmare TV special, a worldwide concert tour in 1975, and his Welcome to My Nightmare concert film in 1976. The ensuing tour was one of the most over-the-top excursions of that era. Most of Lou Reed’s band joined Cooper for this record.
Zipper Catches Skin is the seventh solo studio album by American rock singer Alice Cooper, released on August 25, 1982 by Warner Bros. Records.
Love It to Death is the third studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released on March 9, 1971. It was the band's first commercially successful album and the first album that consolidated the band's aggressive hard-rocking sound, instead of the psychedelic and experimental rock style of their first two albums. The album's best-known track, "I'm Eighteen", was released as a single to test the band's commercial viability before the album was recorded.
School's Out is the fifth studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released in 1972. Following on from the success of Killer, School's Out reached No. 2 on the US Billboard 200 chart and No. 1 on the Canadian RPM 100 Top Albums chart, holding the top position for four weeks. The single "School's Out" reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 3 on the Canadian RPM Top Singles Chart and went to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart.
Keri Kelli is an American hard rock guitarist who has played with artists and groups including Alice Cooper, Slash, Jani Lane, Vince Neil and John Waite. In March 2013 he formed Project Rock together with James Kottak from the Scorpions. Project Rock consisted of Keri Kelli, James Kottak, Tim 'Ripper' Owens, Rudy Sarzo & Teddy Zig-Zag. Kelli is currently in the band Night Ranger.
Killer is the fourth studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released in November 1971 by Warner Bros. Records. The album peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and the two singles "Under My Wheels" and "Be My Lover" made the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Richard Allen Wagner was an American rock guitarist, songwriter and author best known for his work with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, and Kiss. He also fronted his own Michigan-based bands, the Frost and the Bossmen.
Porn Stars is a studio album by the band Pretty Boy Floyd. It features re-recordings of six tracks from their debut album Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz, a re-recording of one track from Tonight Belongs To The Young, and a re-recording of one track from their EP A Tale of Sex, Designer Drugs, and the Death of Rock N Roll. The production on this recording is notably far more raw than their debut.
Welcome to My Nightmare is a 1976 concert film of Alice Cooper's show of the same name. It was produced, directed and choreographed by David Winters. The film accompanied the album, the stage show by the same name and the TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare, the first ever rock music video album, starring Cooper and Vincent Price in person. Though it failed at the box office, it later became a midnight movie favorite and a cult classic.
"Only Women Bleed" is a song by Alice Cooper, released on his debut solo album Welcome to My Nightmare in 1975. It was written by Cooper and Dick Wagner, and was the second single from the album to be released.
Alice Cooper: The Nightmare was a conceptual television special showcasing the music of the Welcome to My Nightmare album by Alice Cooper. It originally broadcast in North America on April 25, 1975, by ABC.
Stephen John Hunter is an American guitarist, primarily a session player. He has worked with Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, acquiring the moniker "The Deacon". Hunter first played with Mitch Ryder's Detroit, beginning a long association with record producer Bob Ezrin who has said Steve Hunter has contributed so much to rock music in general that he truly deserves the designation of "Guitar Hero". Steve Hunter has played some of the greatest riffs in rock history - the first solo in Aerosmith's "Train Kept A Rollin'", the acoustic intro on Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" and he wrote the intro interlude on Lou Reed's live version of "Sweet Jane" on Reed's first gold record.
"Welcome to My Nightmare" is the title track to Alice Cooper's eighth studio album. The song is written by Cooper, Dick Wagner and Bob Ezrin. It peaked at 45 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song itself mixes elements from disco, jazz, hard rock, and keeps a "heavy-yet-funky beat". Cooper would later perform the song on The Muppet Show. The tune was placed tenth on a list AOL Radio made of the "10 Best Halloween Songs".
Welcome 2 My Nightmare is the nineteenth solo album by American rock musician Alice Cooper, released in September 2011. Peaking at No. 22 in the Billboard 200 it is Cooper's highest-charting album in the US since 1989's Trash. The album is a sequel to his 1975 album Welcome to My Nightmare.
"Down to the Line" is a 1975 song written by Randy Bachman, with Kim Fowley, Mark Anthony and Vincent Furnier. It was first recorded by Canadian rock group Bachman–Turner Overdrive (BTO) as a non-album single and released in November 1975, just ahead of their December 1975 album Head On. The lead vocal is provided by Randy Bachman. It was the only non-album single released by BTO, though it was included on some later releases of the Head On album in CD format. "Down to the Line" just missed the U.S. Top 40, peaking at #43 on the Billboard Hot 100 on January 3, 1976. The single fared much better in Canada, peaking at #13 on the Canadian RPM charts.