Remember this from David Bowie’s penultimate album The Next Day? It’s a perfect psychedelic pop melody; indeed it could easily have been written in 1965. Maybe it was, and he just kept it in his back pocket for some infathomable Bowie-ish reason. But no; the lyrics point a more contemporary subject; this is no romantic ditty but a song about a high school massacre.
Bowie’s Valentine is an alienated kid with a list of targets:“Valentine told me who’s to go…The teachers and the football stars “. As well as sketching a horrific, and common, aspect of American life today, Bowie is referencing the 1929 “St Valentine’s Day massacre” in gangland Chicago.
A jarring contrast between music and message is always a winning formula in pop/rock. This is the only song I can think of about a high school massacre since The Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays”.
(Sorry this is not a very heart-warming post – blame Mr Bowie! 😉 )
Tom George 
Recently heard about these podcasts called This American Life which are the brainchild of Ira Glass. He did one on a related subject where reporters went into a school where in one year 29 individual students were shot in gangland violence. Still to listen to it but thought I would put it here in case anyone else wanted to. It won a lot of awards. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/487/harper-high-school-part-one