by Renee Israel
The UK public's anger at XFactor producer, Simon Cowell's continual dominance
of the holiday season charts with his "commercial hits" has resulted in a coup
this year.
What started off as an innocent Facebook group "Rage Against the Machine for
Christmas No. 1 Spot" by two fed up youngsters, snowballed into an incredible
movement that saw hundreds of thousands of Facebook members buy "Killing the
Name" in what the campaign terms a "protest to the X Factor monotony."
The X Factor's literal stranglehold on the UK Christmas charts came to an
abrupt end last night when over 50,000 more copies of the 1992 song Killing in
the Name by the American group Rage Against the Machine were sold, making it the
top No 1 Christmas hit for 2009.
The song, which features highly expletive language and rallies against the
establishment, wassent as a message to Simon Cowell and his monopoly on the
charts for four years running.
Simon Cowell, vacationing in the Caribbean, commented on the news and said:
"I am gutted for Joe because a No 1 single meant a lot to him,"
But ever the gracious Geordie, Joe said: "This time last year I never thought
for one minute that I'd win the X Factor, never mind about having a debut single
out, so I'm just delighted to be in the charts."
The irony of this entire campaign, however, is that Rage Against the Machine
is under Simon's Sony deal, meaning that much of the money from the sales for
BOTH singles will be heading into the Cowell bank vault anyway...
In the meantime, bookies such as William Hill are facing monster payouts over
the upset. Ten days ago, the bookie had Rage Against the Machine as a 100/1
wager, slashing the odds to 1/5 (1.2) by the close of the last day.
"The industry will be paying out a large six figure sum after the greatest
gamble was landed in Christmas number one history," said a spokesman for the
group. "It seems that punters who stood to win thousands have been multi
downloading huge numbers. We started the day with festive cheer, which turned in
to festive fear and now we are just in festive rage."
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