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High School Confidential (E)(edited radio version)(WORD)
High School Confidential (E)(edited radio version)(PDF)
YOU CAN PLAY ALONG WITH THE FIRST VIDEO! I've done up the songsheet based on that edited version (see the history of the song below). You can also substitute [A7] for A and [B7] for [B]. I may, or may not, put it in a different key for BUG and yet this is a great key! We'll see!
"High School Confidential" written by Toronto band, Rough Trade (Carole Pope and Kevan Staples) was nominated for the Juno "Single of the Year" award, and the band performed it at the 1980 Juno Awards, which contributed to its recognition in the Canadian music industry. The song's producer was Gene Martynec, who won the Juno Award for Producer of the Year for his work on "High School Confidential" and Bruce Cockburn's "Tokyo". At the 1982 JUNO Awards, Pope and Staples were nominated for Composer of the Year and Single of the Year for High School Confidential; with Pope winning Female Vocalist of the Year in 1983, following up her Most Promising Female Vocalist win in 1981.It was written by the band's main songwriting team, Carole Pope and Kevan Staples, and was originally written for a male lead to sing, but Pope decided to take on the song herself, recalling, “I didn’t think it would be a big deal that I would be singing about a woman. But when I sang it, it was full of innuendo — a lesbian love song. Quite frankly, we were surprised at how successful we were.” The narrator compares the classmate to 1950s sex symbols Mamie Van Doren, Anita Ekberg and Dagmar, and reveals her own unrequited lust for her: in one of the most famous lyrics from the song, Pope sings "She makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way". The lyrics never explicitly state the narrator's own sex, so they may be read either as Pope speaking from a male perspective, or as a reference to lesbianism. At the time of its release, it was one of the most sexually explicit songs ever to reach the Canadian pop charts, and despite the sexual ambiguity, the first with such strong lesbian overtones. Although controversial, the song was a Top 20 hit, peaking at No. 12 nationwide on the RPM singles chart (#1 on their CANCON Chart) on June 20, 1981 and at No. 8 on the CHUM Chart in Toronto on May 30 of the same year. However, some radio stations refused to play the song, and others played a censored version with some of the most controversial lyrics removed; CHUM-FM paid for the band to record a cleaned-up version that avoided the line, "She makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way." This is the version I've done up for BUG. k.d. lang was apparently inspired by seeing the band perform the number on the televised Juno Awards presentation that year, "seeing [Carole] set a tone for me that I could be out, no question."
In 2005, "High School Confidential" was named the 38th greatest Canadian song of all time on the CBC Radio One series 50 Tracks: The Canadian Version. And here's all about the induction of the song into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020: One of the Most Controversial Songs in Canadian Music - “High School Confidential” - Trailblazes into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame