Nah it's just ignorant to think like that. If you make excuses about your marks, you're gonna expect really high marks in the HSC and then be extremely disappointed.
Ohhh man how good is it when they realise they can't rely on their horse shit rote learned essays and end up scraping a pass.
"There was too much maths in that chemistry exam"
This. My old teacher has marked 2U papers for years, and he said they don't pay marks for simplifying. Unless the question says "simplify", just differentiate it and move on. It's a waste of time simplifying it.
They get the highest and lowest internal marks, and then align those to the highest and lowest external marks. Eg. If the high/lowest internals are 90 and 40, and the high/lowest externals are 80 and 40, the internal marks are aligned to 80 and 50. For everyone in the middle, it's the gaps...
Songs aren't bad to use if you choose one with a deeper message. In the case of The Castle, it would be an anti-government message like Bliss n Eso, or you could go for a full blown anarchist stance of bands like Rage Against the Machine or Pennywise.