Songfacts®:

• Go To School is a fantasy musical about a monkey called Shane who is raised by a pair of aspiring musicians as a human boy. Shane's parents are played by the D'Addario brothers' real-life mother Susan Hall and (the) Todd Rundgren.
  
  This song is sung by Susan Hall from the perspective of Carol (the Mom) in the story. She is bitter about her unsuccessful crack at being a rock artist and blames adopting Shane for her music career stalling. Michael D'Addario told The Independent that the song is close to the knuckle as his mom gave up her own artistic aspirations to become a psychologist. "It's the worst versions of our parents possible," he said. "If she was that close to that character she couldn't have sung it, it would have been too hurtful."
• Writing a story-driven record proved harder than expected, and the brothers responded very differently to the pressure. Michael grew increasingly uneasy while Brian became fully absorbed in the project. The two still disagree good-naturedly about its legacy. "It has some good songs, and some people say it was their favorite record," Brian told Uncut magazine in 2026. "I think every band should have a record like that. We just did it earlier in our career than most."
  
  Michael, on the other hand, is more critical of the concept-album experience, saying it taught the band a hard lesson about sustaining a project on the road. "We misunderstood that when you make a record you then have to do it for two years," he said. "Just s--tting out music, it's not really workable. You have to believe in something because you have to play it and you have to talk about it to sell it. We were stuck on the road with this thing I hated."