Hype hype lads – a music column from someone who knows almost literally nothing about music is coming your way.

Provisionally sub-titled ‘Songs That Get Stuck In Your Head That You Constantly Sing Along To, Even Though You Probably Shouldn’t ‘Cos They’re Not Really Anything To Do With You’: this week’s instalment will deal with protest songs.

There’s a couple of ways you can belt out a protest song. They’re inarguably pretty solid in the shower (unlike most soap, hey hey) but my most common method is over the washing up. To be fair, I don’t sing that much in my gyp in Cambridge. When I’ve cooked in and eaten from the very same pot, it gets rinsed out rapidly. Rapidly and, for the most part, silently. It’s another story when I’m home for the holidays however – faced with a mountain of empty tea cups, half-full cups, slightly-full cups and really-this-is-just-a-waste-of-tea-it’s-a-fucking-full-cup-you-just-let-go-cold cups; the sheer mass invites rhythm. The rhythm, my friends, invites tunes:

Don’t hand me over! Don’t hand me over!

For a crime I haven’t done.

I’m not guilty and you know it. . .

I think the gist here, if I’m to (and I know you want to hear this lads, so stay tuned) psychoanalyse myself, lies in the key line “I’m not guilty…”

See, those tea cups, yeah? I don’t drink tea. Well, okay, okay I lie (“only the truth in Varsity” as the editor sternly told me), I rarely drink tea. It’s unusual. Unusual enough that the pile of tea cups is not mine. And so I, a cheery twenty year old girl who’s never had anything other than the friendliest of interactions with any police force, think it pertinent to equate, through the medium of ‘chune’, the washing up of the cups of others (can we just appreciate the non-Tab-ness of that? La plume de ma tante, ou quoi?) with, you know, harassment and unjust incarceration.

Why am I such a wanker? Why did I write an article about this? Do we all do it? Does anyone care? These are questions, my little pals, to which I simply do not know the answer. I do know, however, one thing. Protest songs, even with political weight appropriated and summarily removed by white-cis-girl yours truly, contain strong general knowledge.

There are traaaaces of nitrate

On cigarettes and matches

On formica table-tops

And decks of playing cards

I did not know that, and would not have known that, if it hadn’t been put to such a pleasing, and belt-able, melody. Equally, how far is Belfast from Dublin, lads? It’s Ninety miles from Dublin, that’s how far.

“Protest songs, even with political weight appropriated and summarily removed by white-cis-girl yours truly, contain strong general knowledge”

I am, of course, being slightly facetious. General knowledge is definitely a good thing (my primary school was - not to brag - slightly famous in table quiz circles) but there’s little more than mental laziness and deep seated solipsism (one more shout out for Varsity standards) involved in immediately linking the words you’re singing with the action you’re undertaking. Having protest songs bopping around your head is great – really, I shouldn’t be sitting here trivialising them. They’re a huge, important thing with which to be raised; it’s like living in an anti-Brave New World. If you have language of protest and rebellion quickly to hand, the hope might be that you’ll be quicker riled by injustices against others. Or at least gently suggest that your employer pay you the minimum wage for your age.

Fake News: Aristocracy runs amok at Caesarian Sunday

Next week’s column, provisionally entitled ‘Love Song Wank’ will hopefully be less about me. And have a less apologetic close. I do try not to be awful. Definitely respect protests. Sorry kids. Feature question for someone who knows more – where are the Woody Guthries of today? Answers on a postcard. Or in an article. Better written than this. Fewer brackets. More. Full. Sentences