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.
Please, please buy Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name this week.
In case there are people out there who haven’t heard about it, there is a campaign to get RATM’s Killing in the Name as the Christmas number 1 in the UK singles chart in an attempt to beat the X Factor single.
I’m sure many of you are either aware or can figure out the reasons why we would want this to happen. X Factor predictably wins every year off the back of a TV show rather than genuine popularity of the music. This is evident from the fact it’s called the X Factor single rather than actually mentioning the song title or artist.
Not to mention the fact that the campaign for Killing in the Name has also raised £30,000 for charity Shelter.
However given you’re smart enough to know all this, what I really want to talk about is whether you should go out and actually buy the song. Many people will probably be thinking that it won’t make a difference and the X Factor single is obviously going to win so it’s pointless buying it.
But it isn’t.
Here are some stats. The Christmas number one normally sells around 400,000 copies, that is around half the number of people in the Facebook group for the campaign. If everyone in the group bought just one copy it would have twice the sales that the X Factor single would have.
Of course you’re thinking that most of the people in the group won’t buy it and so it won’t get nearly that much sales. I thought the same thing but apparently that simply isn’t the case. As well as the group growing exponentially (it’s gained 50,000 members in the past 24 hours) it is actually outselling X Factor currently according to BBC News.
It has been ahead of X Factor on the Amazon, HMV and Play.com sales charts and this afternoon finally overtook X Factor on the iTunes chart as well. It’s winning.
The reason we aren’t counting our chickens just yet though is because the X Factor single comes out in hard copy tomorrow, which is likely to give it a boost in sales.
However physical sales account for only 10% of singles sales these days and according to the BBC News article Killing in the Name is just over 10% ahead currently. This means that with the boost X Factor will get from physical sales it will amost be a dead heat.
Therefore we can draw two conclusions from this. Firstly is that you actually buying the single will actually make a difference as Killing in the Name can win this thing. Secondly it isn’t too far ahead that it makes it pointless you buying it because it’s obviously going to win. It’s going to be very close to the point where you actually buying the single could not make more of a difference.
So there you have it, buy it, it will make a difference. Also if you aren’t aware, it is only 29p on Amazon! For that kind of cash if you bring me your receipt when I next see you, I will actually refund you the cost of buying a single.
For those of you that really want to get involved, while chart rules prevent you from just buying loads of copies for yourself (although one wonders how they would know, especially if you buy from multiple sellers), you can gift extra purcahses to your friends and family. Don’t forget to join the Facebook group and invite all your friends too.
Oh and one final thought in case everything I have written has yet to sway you – just imagine how much Killing in the Name willing will annoy Daily Mail readers 😀 .