Green Day and Vitamin C have had a good run so Home & Hosed’s Declan Byrne puts forward a few options for an overdue update.

It’s the end of the year and as you step out of that school assembly for the very last time, there’s usually one of two songs that blare out the speakers: Green Day's ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’ or Vitamin C's ‘Graduation (Friends Forever)’.

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For about 20 years, these two anthems have been synonymous with feelings of ripping your tie off, signing your besties shirt, burning those school books, and convincing Mum you’re going to be fine at schoolies.

But let’s be honest, it’s time for a refresh. We need a new song that can take us into the next two decades. Consider Green Day and Vitamin C graduated, they're borderline toolies from now on.

In order to cast your vote, we’ve gotta work out some of the ingredients that make a successful goodbye school song.

Singalong-able

It’s very obvious but still needs to be said. If you can imagine linking arms with your crew and belting it out at the top of your voice then you’ve ticked the first and most important box. Sorry to all those bangers with minimal or no lyrics, your place is at the end of the night, not the end of school.

No high notes pls

The song also can’t be an Australian Idol scale-jumping comp that would test even the best choir kid in your year. It needs to sit mostly in the middle so it suits both the female and male register.

Tear-jerker

If you’re singing along with linked arms and some eye juice wells up and the goosebumps appear, you know you’ve got the next piece of the puzzle sorted. There needs to be a deep, emotional connection between you and the song. It’s hard to quantify, but it’s a secret ingredient which solidifies the bond of graduation forever.

No mysteries

There’s also very little room for ambiguous metaphors or vague lyrics. Vitamin C basically hits you over the head with her message, and Green Day’s Billy Joe singing about forks stuck in the road and having the time of your life. The message needs to be pretty clear.

Lessons learned

There has to be some positivity but also some real talk. Like school, life isn’t all smiles and good times, so if there’s some lessons thrown into the mix then you’re really preparing yourself for the big pond that awaits.

Brackets

This is not mandatory, but the most superficial analysis of both song titles reveals that parentheses play (a big) part in their appeal. Got brackets? you know we’re onto a winner.

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Whatsapp Amy Shark, E^ST, Mallrat & Sam from Ball Park Music.

The new candidates

After some extensive analysis, here are four new songs that stand out as possibilities. Have a read and make your voice heard by voting below.

E^ST ‘Life Goes On’

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The easy read is that this is a love song. But what if E^ST is singing about school – it still makes sense right?! With lines like ‘We don’t share our time for long’ and ‘there was something great about you’, it all checks out! This one is full of life lessons, is very singalong-able, and even though there’s a few high notes, it would be fun to hear the boys at school try their best to hit that note on ‘fleeting’.

Mallrat ‘Better’

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This is a great song to sing with your friends about how it’s all gonna be ok. It’s a pre-summer jam, perfect for Australian schools wrapping up, and it includes some life lessons about drifting away from your mates but still being content that things are good right now. Once again, Mallrat does hit some pretty high notes but there was enough of you enjoying singing along to vote it in at #46 in the 2017 Hottest 100.

Amy Shark ‘I Said Hi’

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This one hits that emotional connection in a big way. A huge sing-along about fighting against adversity and waving to them (your mean school principal) as you succeed is a real mood for graduation. And here’s an idea, as the song ends, you change the last line to ‘tell ‘em all I said bye!’. In which case it’s probably worth changing the title for the graduation version to ‘I Said Hi (Bye)’. Brackets!!

Ball Park Music ‘It’s Nice To Be Alive’

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It’s one of the best Australian songs of the last decade (don’t @ me) and it could definitely work as a see-ya-later school anthem. Imagine singing ‘every time we wave our hands we’re cool/we’re f**king amazing’ as you leave school forever. The tears, goosebumps and fist pumps would be out in force. Plus, there’s plenty of life lessons and it sits in that highly singalong-able, not-too-high register. The only tough bit? Getting that F-bomb past the teachers, maybe it's 'freakin' amazing' in the graduation edit.

Now it's time for you to decide, Green Day and Vitamin C are getting the boot, who's in?