Facebook 1, Cowell 0

On an utterly trivial note it amuses me that Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine is the Christmas number 1 having beaten another of Simon Cowell’s tedious products
The hot favourite had been X Factor winner Something McElderry with a cover of a Miley Cyrus song. Going by the comments he made during the week,Mephistopholes Cowell is probably not happy (but who gives a shit?)

Krissi Murrison, editor of the NME, stated “It proves not only that the public have better taste than Simon Cowell gives them credit for, but that it there is actually an alternative to the pap we have been fed by X Factor for the past six Christmases, The assumption was obviously that no-one could topple the combined power of ITV and X Factor - especially not a grassroots campaign with zero marketing budget. But this just proves that anything is possible. The public has had enough of them hi-jacking the charts with second-rate karaoke cover versions, and this is our way of showing that.”

A Facebook group called “Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No 1” quickly transformed itself into a major grassroots protest against the X-Factor attracting more than 980,000 followers. The campaign took on an increasingly anti-corporate and pro-social justice tone with followers encouraging each other to donate to the homeless charity Shelter which received £65,000 in public donations. Rage Against the Machine also lent their support to the campaign, promising to donate their royalties to Shelter and to play a thank you gig in the UK next year if the campaign was successful.

The other losers are Bookies who are set to make a major loss from the Rage victory. Rupert Adams, from William Hill, said. “We’ll probably take quite a hit, quite possibly a six or seven
figure hit” My heart bleeds for that bunch of parasites.

I don’t care for RATM but I care for X-Factor crap even less. It’s not that the singers are bad, far from it, but they are straitjacketed into churning out bland crap by svengalis like Cowell and Louis Walsh. More power I say to the campaign which cocked a snook at an entertainment industry and made a lot of money for a deserving charity to boot!