Our version of American Idol is called X-Factor (it was Pop Idol, which is where the Idol name came from, but it's not anymore). It runs from the end of summer, and finishes up a couple of weeks before Christmas, which means the winner's single always comes out during the final week of sales before they announce the Christmas number 1. Nobody is quite sure why being the number one song at Christmas is such a big deal over here, but it's always been a bit special. The last four years however, the X-Factor winner has always been number one by a mile. Nothing comes close. I remember there always being an exciting wait as a few different songs would be in with a chance of getting it every year (mostly novelty christmas songs, sure, but there was still an excitement about it).
This year, a bunch of people made a group on Facebook to try and do something about it. My initial reaction was... eh, these online protests never work. I'm not sure how your chart works over there in the US, but around 4 years ago they started counting legal downloads for our chart, and they now make up a far greater percentage of singles sales than CDs do. Then, a couple of years ago the rules changes again, so -any- downloaded song would count (When it was just CDs, a song would obviously only count if it was a recent release and there were CD singles in stock, and for the first couple of years of the downloads, they only counted new releases for a certain amount of time after the release).
So the Facebook group decided to pick Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name (from 1992) as our rebel anthem. Many people pointed out this was on Epic Records, which are part of Sony, which Simon Cowell and his X-Factor winner are also part of, but it wasn't about that. It wasn't to stop him making money, it was just to see if we still had the power to choose our christmas number one and not just have to put up with this reality TV winner every year. For what it's worth, I actually like watching the show, but some comments made by the judges involved -really- annoyed me.
First of all it started getting picked up on national radio, with presenters scoffing at it, saying why don't these anti-social nerds protest about something that really matters instead? And then Cowell and the other judges came out and said it was spoiling it for the winner of the show. What? How does winning that show give someone the right to claim Christmas number 1? That's what annoyed me the most, along with them saying how hard he's worked for this. Rubbish! This guy had to practice one song a week for most of the show, and then two when it got close to the end, for ten weeks! I have friends that are musicians, they write their own music, play their own instruments, and spend almost everything they make just traveling about to do other shows, so I'm not gonna be told some kid that won a karaoke contest has worked so hard he deserves a christmas number one!
As the week went on, people starting coming out in support of the campaign. Some really big people, such as Paul McCartney, who even performed on the final of the X-Factor show. We could all see Rage were ahead on -all- the download services, but these X-Factor singles are different. A lot of them are made up from CD sales, stocking fillers for Christmas, and people that never usually bother to buy music going out to get the CDs. All the way through the week, the X-Factor winner was the favourite, and apparently had a lead of around 10k sales on friday, with his biggest sales expected on the saturday when most of -that- sort of crowd would be out shopping.
The band even threw in their support. This was nothing to do with them, this was purely done by fans on Facebook, but a lot of TV media started to say they were being backed by a fan campaign, or that Rage were telling their fans what to buy just the same as Cowell was telling people what to buy, but there was no re-release of this song, it was just picked to be something really different for a Christmas number one, and partly because of the lyric (I won't repeat it here, if you've heard the song you can probably guess it. I noticed US news websites would censor the lyric in their print, but not the UK websites, not sure why that is?). The facebook group also set up a donation to a homeless charity over here, to show that they could also do a bit more than just win back out Christmas number one, and the band then said they'd give the money made from the sales to the charity on top, and also promised a free gig in the UK to celebrate should the song get to number one.
The chart was announced on sunday, and against all odds, Killing in the Name was number one for Christmas! It sold 500k, with the X-Factor Winner selling 450k (we're a 60 million population country, so I imagine these numbers are tiny compared to any US single sales during any given week). It's said that Killing in the Name was downloaded over 200,000 times on that final saturday, so those smug radio DJs that scoffed at the campaign at the start of the week, then had to announce it as our Christmas number one! So far, the facebook group has raised £90,000 for the homeless charity, and is really trying to push this up to 100k by tomorrow.
So to get you feel in a Christmas mood
here's a short interview with the band on the chart battle, followed by a live performance on the song, and a quote from the X-Factor winner 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUGeoJtTnZQ (it's the censored version if you're worried about the bad words)
"They can't be serious! I had no idea what it sounded like. It's dreadful and I hate it. How could anyone enjoy this? Can you imagine the grandmas hearing this over Christmas lunch?"
