If there’s a more powerful, pertinent and poignant protest song than Midlife In A Small Town by Dead Sheeran, I’d like to hear it.

Every now and then some ill-informed broadsheet journalist writes an article about how “there’s no protest music these days.”

Whenever they do I think they should get out more, or listen to more music – or read Louder Than War, where I write regularly.

Because we’ve championed loads of them.

Best known is probably Sleaford Mods but also Billy No Mates, Bob Vylan and this fellow, a middle-aged boxing coach called Paul who goes by the alter-ego Dead Sheeran.

His music is described with pinpoint precision by my colleague Ged Babey as “punk rock laptop hip hop made by a 50-year-old bloke who treads a fine line between polemic, pisstake, profanity and profundity.”

Drawn from painful personal experience, Midlife In A Small Town is No.10 in LTW’s top ten tracks of 2022, voted for by writers and readers alike.

If there’s a more powerful, pertinent and poignant song about mental health and male suicide… well, there isn’t.

And if that’s not protest music then I don’t know what is.