The song which tops the UK charts over Christmas is still a closely-watched affair in Britain. Even as the charts have come to mean less in the music world, it still has a certain cachet. Recently, Simon Cowell's influence on the business has become overwhelming as the global sales of Susan Boyle's debut album testify. Cowell is the man behind X Factor, which is another iteration of the Pop Idol audition format and one which is wholly-owned by the man. When the programme's winner, Joe McElderry, was scheduled to release a song for the holidays, it seemed a shoe-in for the top spot.
Cowell's dominance is irritating and some people decided to see if they could throw a spanner in the works. A campaign started on Facebook to promote "Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine as the Christmas No.1. These days, the charts also count downloads in their sales estimates so it doesn't actually require a physical release from a label to see a song climb up the rankings. The campaign gained momentum and the band lent their support with interviews. Guitarist Tom Morello said "We are honoured they've chosen our song to be the rebel anthem to try to topple the X Factor monopoly". One BBC Radio appearance went a bit wrong when the band - inevitably you might think - reneged on an agreement to cut out the swearing and dropped F-bombs during a live performance of the song on a morning show.
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Sunday was the big day as the final chart was played out and Rage came out on top. Some think a recent bout of bad weather and snow had an influence, limiting physical CD sales in shops and giving the edge to downloaders - some people would undoubtedly have thought about buying the X Factor CD has a stocking-filler. In the final week, Rage sold 500,000 to the X Factor song's 450,000.As the song was abruptly faded out during the controversial closing bars of the song, listeners heard presenter Shelagh Fogarty say, "get rid of it". She added: "Sorry. We needed to get rid of that because that suddenly turned in to something we were not expecting. "Well, we were expecting it and asked them not to do it and they did it anyway - so buy Joe's record."
Reaction from singer Zack de la Rocha (audio)
