Rage Against Cowell

Well, we did it, Xmas no1 of 1009 was “Killing in the Name of” by Rage against the machine and not “the Climb” by…. Come on, what’s his name, you know, hingmy off of that thing.

That is a little cruel, but hells, we’ve earned it. Year after year of dreary X-Factor winners, or pop idol etc, and finally, a good song. I’m tempted to get all choked up and start talking us all up, how we did the impossible and that makes us mighty, or indeed point out that governments should take heed, because there are more bright independent people out there, we just rarely move like a herd, but I’ll leave it for the moment.

Naturally, there have been naysayers, smart alecs talking about how its funny that a whole load of people bought a song with the chorus “I won’t do what you tell me” because they were told to, and of course that both songs are on labels owned by Sony, so whatever wins Sony makes a big heap of money (And some said by that reasoning Cowell)

To address the second first, yes, it may well have been a marketing stunt by Sony, possibly off the back of cowell’s clever move last year of releasing a weak and lifeless cover of “Hallelujah” prompting online campaigns to get one of several alternative versions to No1, the advantage, he has a stake in the rights to Hallelujah so probably got a fair chunk of money from that. However someone likened him getting money from RATM sales to JD sports getting money from M&S sales because they share the same shopping centre.

The First, well, I’d disagree, yes we all bought the song on a specific week for the purpose of getting it to No1, but I’m betting if you asked 50 people you’d get at least 20 different reasons. Me, I like the song and don’t own it, plus I really liked the idea of every pointless light pop TV and radio station having to play Killing in the name of, and indeed have enjoyed seeing the gritted teeth approach most of them have to playing a storming rebellious hit. In fact one criticism is that many pop stations have since carried on regardless, in a review of 2009 one station played an excerpt from Killing, only to play the whole of the climb. Great, so here’s a clip of the winner, and here’s the whole of No2.

My other reason is a stupid one. See, I have a small confession, up until my late teens, music didn’t really interest me. In fact most of my CD collection was film soundtracks. Thing is I blame a lot of that on opportunity. When I was younger most of the people I hung around liked “What was in the charts” basically through primary school I was around people who were content to be told what they liked. I just couldn’t bring myself to agree, so I generally accepted that, aside from the odd flash of something I liked that chart music wasn’t for me. As I grew up obviously my horizons expanded. This is the crux of the matter. While my rock taste was developing if I hadn’t been to rock clubs and talking to rock fans then many bands wouldn’t register. I often think that if a good rock song could get up the charts and get the radio play then more people would realise how awesome rock is. Its stupid but there we are. And that’s my final reason. If one person who has been content to listen to the manufactured drivel gets inspired to Rock from this, then it’s been a success.