Boy from School

The album version is titled And I Was a Boy from School. EMI asked for the title to be shortened for the single, which came out in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2006 and peaked at 40. Pitchfork's Sean Fennessey called it throbbing and sincere and singled out Taylor's sweetly thin vocals and the line about how we try but don't belong, calling it as good a pop song as had been written that year. The magazine ranked it seventh among the songs of 2006 and 29th on its list of the top 500 songs of the 2000s.

Other critics reached for comparisons. NME heard the thudding beat of Stardust's Music Sounds Better with You fused to the synth swoon of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Drowned in Sound said the sighs of the sung line added a human touch to a genre led by robots, and Virgin Media called it a bittersweet electro gem. The Observer, profiling the band in 2019, counted it among the best songs, which undercut playfulness with a heart-tugging melancholy.

Single, video and afterlife

The first single CD collected six tracks: the song, a Hot Chip rework, A Glue Too Thick, Erol Alkan's rework, The Bell Ringers and the Cosmic Sandwich remix. A second CD paired it with Law Of Salvation and the video. The video was compared to the children's craft programme Art Attack, and Taylor told Gigwise it had been expensive. Bevis Martin made the artwork. The song opens The Simpsons episode A Totally Fun Thing Bart Will Never Do Again, in a montage of Bart's weekly routine, and was used in Toonami commercials in Europe.

Live and covers

It has 346 recorded performances, and it was played at their NPR Tiny Desk in 2024. Covers include Portastatic in 2006, Maritime in 2007, Grizzly Bear in 2010 and Tears For Fears in 2013.