A Rage Against Christmas
The Christmas #1 singles in England have always been a big deal in that music market. Over the years, there has been many great singles at the top during Christmas week, like The Beatles' "Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out" in 1965, Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody" in 1973, Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in 1984 and Bob the Builder's "Can We Fix It" in 2000. But in recent years, the campaign has been hijacked a bit by Simon Cowell's ragtag music killers.
Until recently, the gratified winners were those who went to the shops to buy a single hoping to help it to the top of the charts for Christmas. It was as part of the season as Christmas pudding and Christmas crackers. But this year, social media killed the Radio Star.
As Aidan Coughlin the Herald writes....
"Most of us know the story by now. The (UK) Christmas number-one slot has long been dominated by reality TV winners, with only two exceptions since Girls Aloud clinched the top spot on the back of their Popstars win in 2002. More to the point, the past four number ones have all come from X Factor winners.
So, to stop them from making it five-in-a-row, a Facebook campaign was set up encouraging people to buy Rage Against The Machine's 'Killing In The Name' and get it to the top of the charts.
It succeeded, but what point was really proven? What statement has actually been made on the nature of modern pop music, or manufactured talent? Like many, I'm still struggling to work that out."
I think it's fascinating from a human perspective that Rage Against the Machine (or their fans) got enough people jazzed to act online to dethrone a boring reality TV show song for the UK Christmas #1. But essentially, it looks to me like 'ballot stuffing' of the new social media order, a fraud that looks like a fraud, walks like a fraud and is a fraud. As quaint traditions, this business of the Christmas number 1 is as hokey as our Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade (one LONG shopping advert). But still, I think the British radio listeners got let down this year. That's too bad.
Merry Christmas, Everybody.
1 comments:
I disagree. Sure, the RATM thing was contrived and amplified by social media, but it's still a big collective voice rising up against a stale music establishment. God bless them for it! And it's not like the Xfactor flavor-of-the-day isn't getting plenty of money and attention. His shitty single is still widely available to the millions of sheep who want to buy it (or, worse, give it to others for Christmas...)
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