Sponsored by
Rage against the X Factor 'rebels'
I TELL you what I miss about the old-fashioned 'race' for the Christmas number one, I miss the complete randomness of it.
The X Factor, obviously, has a lot to answer for. It has negated the joy of the 80s and 90s when any number of bizarre and utterly non-festive tunes often made it to the top spot.
Take, for example, 1987 when the frontrunner was the brilliantly seasonal Fairytale of New York by The Pogues. They really ought to have come first but instead it was the Pet Shop Boys crazy hi-nrg electonica remix of Elvis Presley’s Always on my Mind.
And in 1993 Mr Blobby beat Take That to number one, even though the boyband had taken Britain by storm that year. Admittedly Babe was a dreadful song, but let’s brush over that.
There’s more: anyone remember Mad World in 2003? Bob the Builder in 2000? And what about The Flying Pickets’ Only You in 1983?
Random or otherwise, TheX Factor has played a big part in wiping out any potential opposition, but the irritating aspect to the current online backlash against Joe McElderry’s The Climb is that, once again, it’s a completely contrived action.
It is, rather like Cowell’s hit machine, a nationwide campaign. It isn’t just a band releasing a single and hoping for the best just like they used to in the random old days.
And it’s almost as cynical. It’s cynical because those leading the anti-X Factor Facebook movement have chosen a track by Rage Against the Machine as a rallying point, asking fellow dissenters to download it in a bid to scupper McElderry.
But the Christmas number one battle should never be about politics and this choice of tune reeks of contrary youth taking some kind of lame, self- righteous stand.
Just how middle class and cosy is this ‘rebellion’? These bedroom freedom fighters aren’t taking to the sub-zero streets with placards are they? They’re cosily downloading a track on daddy’s Sony Vaio. Oh yeah, they’re REALLY raging against the machine there, aren’t they? Grrrrrrrr. You go guys.
In contrast most of the people who will buy Joe McElderry’s track are most likely to be your regular working class boys and girls who’ve spent weeks watching TheX Factor and already voted for this Geordie teenager.
Ok, it’s still all saturated in an equally cynical commercialism but, well, so what? People don’t have to buy his single. These aren’t brainless victims of a national con, they just want a nice tune to hum for crying out loud.
If the Facebook mutineers had really wanted to negate the commercialism, why didn’t they do so with a little Christmas spirit and choose a suitably festive tune as a means of beating McElderry? What about, just to pluck a name out of the air, John Lennon’s Merry Christmas (War is Over)?
I’ll tell you why: because this is a pretty smug, self-serving exercise. Those people who frantically downloaded Rage Against the Machine aren’t cultural anarchists, they’re an equally manufactured movement replacing the old-fashioned, random race for the Christmas number one with even more cynicism.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Leeds
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North west
