My friend Mabel and I are attempting to lead our house, Kirkeby, towards victory in our annual school event: House Shout. At such a busy school, it’s sometimes hard to unite in one activity; House Shout therefore serves as an important event in bringing the house together and in developing house spirit and camaraderie.
As a house, Kirkeby has previously set the bar high: in 2023 ‘I Will Survive’ brought home the trophy. Most recently, in 2024, although we did not make it onto the podium, we had great fun channelling our inner Justin Bieber to ‘Love me’, led by Kitty and Eva.
This year, Kirkeby will be taking on ‘Dear Future Husband’ by Megan Trainer. With regard to choosing our house song, there were zero complications. While sitting around the dining room table back in fourth form, we figured we would choose this cringe-but-catchy song as our 2025 house anthem. Although other songs where discussed, such as ‘Did I Mention’, from Descendants, we came to the decision ‘Dear Future Husband’ was the most fitting. Choosing the right song doesn’t always prove so easy, however. Rival houses, New House and Grafton came to clashes after both hoped to sing the same song, ‘Viva la Vida’ by Coldplay. This issue led to an intense match of Rock, Paper, Scissors, concluding in Grafton’s victory. New House, with their original plans in ruins, are still left searching for an alternative.
Our criteria for choosing our song goes as follows: i) something everyone can sing, including the individuals (such as myself) who can’t reach the top octaves; ii) lyrics that can be associated with dance moves; iii) a catchy song which everyone enjoys singing – it must be fun.
After receiving the approval for our song from our Hsm, Mrs Deane, we hastily started preparing. In our first get together, we organised positioning, a meticulous operation which involved sorting the house into height order, before filing them into the JCR to create a recessional height formation. Our next step was to start instilling the actions, which I can confirm has not been an easy task, and has definitely not been completed yet. To get 60 girls to do the same action, in sync, has taken some firm instruction from Mabel and myself. To try to make matters easier, we have resorted to filming them rehearse, in order that they can go away with the video and practise in their free time but in recent practices, not much of this has been apparent. The idea is that actions come before the singing, so that they become second nature.
Once this has been achieved, we will start on the singing, and on introducing technicalities such as blends and dynamic contrasts, which will be conducted by the Kirkeby part song team. In terms of background music, we have fourth former Inge on the drums, Kylia on the piano and Mr Raudnitz on the electric guitar.
This year, House Shout has really levelled up. In fact, I believe they are wanting to change the name to ‘House Song’- things are getting serious! So serious, we actually had to attend a ‘House Shout meeting’ where we were presented with the rules, in which there are seven main criteria, and a mark scheme! After years of prioritising the dance moves, it has been made clear that this is now the least of our concerns – only accounting for 3 out of the 40 marks. Instead, we are encouraged to focus on points such as ‘breath control’, ‘not mechanical: shaping the music’ (I will have to double check what this means) and ‘consistency in tempo’.
As part of the overall mark for House Shout, we must produce a pre-song video to show the audience, while we get prepared for our performance. The video, under our strict guidelines, must be sixty seconds long. Kirkeby upper sixth formers, Flavia and Jemima are in charge of its creation. Current plans draw on a popular television programme and involve turning Kirkeby into ‘The Villa’, while third formers run around with their suitcases and water bottles, and interviews take place on their ‘ideal future husbands’.
