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Today we take a look at the 2009 infamous battle between the band Rage Against the Machine and the horrible reality show the X-Factor and creator Simon Cowell. Every year since 2005 the winner of the X-Factor always had the number 1 single come Christmas time, but in 2009 things changed. A grassroots campaign started by a UK DJ got people to buy the Rage Against the Machine song "Killing In the Name" from the group's debut record.
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Now, released in November of 1992, the band's first commercial single, Rage Against the Machine's song, "Killing in the Name" would become the group's signature track. The guitar riff and expletive laden outro of the song made it memorable. It would be inspired by the deadly LA riots of 1992 as well as the Rodney King beating. The song would take aim at institutional racism and the brutality of the police. As you would expect, the large amount of expletives in the song's outro prevented it from achieving much airplay in the United States.
The band found a huge following across the pond in Europe. The song would chart in the UK in 1993, peaking at number 25. It would be strange that 15 years later, the song would make a return to the UK charts but this time at the number 1 spot. It was something that was really unthinkable and shocked a lot of people but how did it happen? Stay tuned to find out.
Christmas time is a big moment for musicians in the UK. It's a general rule of thumb in the country that whatever song tops the charts during the holiday season, will go on to become the biggest selling song of the year. This is a tradition that dates back 50 years to the 70s when rock bands would put out Christmas theme songs or covers.
Come 2005, things started to change a bit in the UK. Now reality TV has been one of the many scurges that has plagued television over the past 20 years and music shows especially have exploded since American Idol's inception in the early 2000s. One of those music shows was the Simon Cowell created X-Factor, which originally started in the UK and migrated across the pond to America in the later part of the decade.
In the UK from 2005 to 2008, each season's winner of The X-Factor would always have the number one song in the country come Christmas time. It was almost like figuring out who was going to win the election of North Korea.
In 2008, radio DJ, John Mortar was sick of Simon Cowell's [bullshit] and launched an online campaign to prevent that year's winner, Alexandra Burke from taking the number one spot. He would urge people online to buy the Rick Astley song, "Never Gonna Give You Up" but the campaign would ultimately fail. Astley's song would not even crack the top 50 in the UK, peaking at number 73. Burke's cover of "Hallelujah" easily took the Number 1 spot that year and became the biggest selling holiday single of all time in the UK.
Come 2009, things would change. In early December of 2009, the same DJ and his wife, Tracy would launch a group on Facebook encouraging people to buy the song, "Killing in the Name" before Christmas in order to prevent the winner of The X Factor that year from taking the Number 1 spot. The campaign would ask people, "Fed up of Simon Cowell's latest karaoke act being Christmas' Number 1? Me too. So who's up for a mass purchase of the track, Killing in the Name" as a protest to the X-Factor monotony?"
The X-Factor winner that year was the person named Joe McElderry who covered the Miley Cyrus song, "The Climb".
Now, the X-Factor song was promising to donate some of their profits to charity, while Rage Against The X Factor campaign encouraged supporters to also give to charity. In fact, a Just Giving page was created to raise money for the homeless charity and shelter, which by December 20th of 2009 had already raised over $100,000 US in funds.
By the middle of December, the group reportedly had over 700,000 members on Facebook and the campaign even caught the attention of Rage Against the Machine guitarist, Tom Morello who lent his support saying, that achieving the Christmas Number 1 would be, as he put it, "A wonderful dose of anarchy," and Morello even planned to donate royalties from the sales of the song to charity.
Morello wouldn't be the only high-profile musician giving their support to the campaign as Dave Grohl, Them Crooked Vultures, Muse and even The Prodigy also voiced their support for the campaign. Also lending their support was heavyweight, Paul McCartney who coincidentally, also appeared on The X Factor with the finalists.
Simon Cowell, for his part, apparently responded to the campaign reportedly calling it "stupid and cynical," but one thing that went unnoticed was that both, the X Factor and Rag
7 сен 2024
