Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” beats out the X Factor single to be Christmas number one. Win.
I don’t know Joe McElderry. I’ve never met him. I don’t know what kind of personality he has, whether he is a enjoyable man to be around, funny, charming and interesting or not.
But if I was to guess I would give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he is probably a nice guy. Honest, genuine, just wants to get up there and sing.
Which makes me wonder how situations like this occur.
Look at yourself. You’re throwing darts at somebody else’s head! What kind of sick weirdo does that?
If I was to take a guess I would say a sweet kid who has a great voice on him but isn’t the smartest kid in the class that has been taken by the music industry and turned into a tool for their own use.
That’s why we’re raging against the machine.
For those of you who read NME you may well have read possibly one of the silliest comments I have read in a long time, and this is from someone who reads the Daily Mail every morning.
Cheryl Cole has launched an attack on Rage Against The Machine for sabotaging the Christmas Number One race. Despite the US band themselves not orchestrating the Facebook campaign to get ‘Killing In The Name’ to the top of the charts ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry, Cole said the battle had now reached biblical levels. “It’s David versus Goliath and it’s not fair on Joe. It’s getting out of hand.” She went on to say that the thought of a US band topping the charts at Christmas was just wrong. “If that song, or should I say campaign, by an American group is our Christmas Number One I’ll be gutted for him and our charts” (The Sun).
The obvious first point is that this campaign wasn’t started by Rage, it was started by fans (and someone would phrase that as true music fans for obviously justified reasons). But that isn’t the main point that I want to make.
The reason the comment is so stupid is because the campaign hasn’t sabotaged the race for the Christmas number one, it’s created a race! Until Rage came along there was no race, the only thing this campaign has sabotaged is X Factor’s divine right to have the Christmas number one as it somehow thinks it is entitled to.
And this is what the campaign is about – it shouldn’t just be a fact that X Factor is entitled to take the number one spot every Christmas, we’re tired of it. We want a fair race based on genuine musical talent rather than how much publicity you can spin off the back of an appallingly bad TV show.
As such I cannot imagine what thought process went through her head that concluded “yes, that’s an intelligent thing to say.” Presumably none.
In other news despite the physical single now being out for the past two days it has still failed to catch up with Rage! Saturday will be the real physical sales boost though so Rage needs a big lead and the campaign needs you. You can gift up to two extra purchases to friends and you can also grab some copies for free without a credit card from Nokia Music.