Charlie Simpson refuses to rewrite politically incorrect 2002 Busted lyric (2024)

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Ahead of the Australian leg of their tour, Busted’s Charlie Simpson reflected on the band’s early beginnings, two decades after they first took the music scene by storm.

Back in 2000, the guitarist and his bandmates James Bourne and Matt Willis were teenagers when they released What I Go To School For.

The song continued to raise eyebrows as they sang about eyeing up a teacher’s derriere or in Air Hostess where they penned their reaction to seeing an air hostess in their uniform.

In the controversial hit, Matt sings: “I drop a pencil on the floor, she bends down and shows me more,” while certain that she “craves” him, a schoolboy.

In the latter, the punk rock band sang: “That uniform you’re wearing, so hot I can’t stop staring. You’re putting on an awesome show.”

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Busted first formed in 2000 (Image: Getty)

They continued: “Writing you a love letter, I messed my pants. When we flew over France, will I see you soon in my hotel room?”

In 2023, the trio returned to celebrate their 20th anniversary and landed number one after rerecording a collection of their song for their Greatest Hits 2.0 album.

Charlie told The Metro: “It was a different time … All the songs have had a fresh makeover, if you like, as we’re thirties and forties and we made them when we were 16 years old.”

When quizzed about changing the politically incorrect lyrics for a tamer audience, the 39-year-old admitted: “Some of the lyrical content of those songs we just wouldn’t write now, so there’s definitely that kind of [icky] feeling.

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Busted re-banded to release their greatest hits album (Image: Getty)

“But they’re so well known by our audience that it doesn’t really matter.

“It’s not like we’re coming out with a new song that sounds like those old songs, or lyrics that sound like those. It captures a moment in time so we can just play them on and on.”

Despite his stance, Charlie revealed: “We changed the teacher’s age in What I Go To School For to 53 instead of 33.

“We didn’t want to change them too much, that’s what people want to hear, it’s what they remember, but making the teacher older was a joke change… otherwise, the teacher would be younger than us now.”

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