Update: Rage Win

Postiwyd gan Sam (Sub-Editor) o Caerdydd - Cyhoeddwyd ar 16/12/2009 am 12:36
5 sylwadau » - Tagiwyd fel Diwylliant, Cerddoriaeth, Materion Cyfoes

If you’ve got access to the internet (how the blazes are you reading this if you haven’t? Don’t feed me that psychic guff) you can’t have helped but notice the campaign to get Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name to Christmas number one, ahead of whoever won the X-Factor and whatever song was selected for them.

Nor indeed could you have ignored the snarky putdowns/legitimate concerns about the campaign by the cynics/the sensible (that’s balance that is), or for that matter numerous articles about the whole affair written by people sat at their laptops scratching their chins and looking for something topical to write about.

Starting out as a group on Facebook , Tracy and Jon Morter’s campaign to stop the latest 'Winner’s Song' automatically claiming the top spot on Jesus’ birthday, has snowballed dramatically over the past couple of weeks, to the extent that Simon Cowell was moved to comment "I think it's quite a cynical campaign geared at me that is actually going to spoil the party for these three."

Although I’m sure those people who are opposed to Cowell and his dark arts are pleased to see him a bit rattled, they appear to be split on the merits of the campaign.

Critics have noted that both Rage Against The Machine and Joe McElderry are in Sony’s clutches. Which ever way you sway, the same company wins. Others have pointed to the hypocrisy inherent in RATM’s leftist, anti-capitalist stance and the fact they’re signed to a major. Some have asked why does it have to be a song that’s seventeen-years-old? Hasn’t there been anything vaguely rebellious released since? While a few have queried why anyone gives two hoots about whose top of the pops nowadays.

But what I’m interested in is why? Why now? Why this year to start such a campaign?

Thoughts have been swirling. Are we simply tired of pop, or at least X-Factor’s saccharine and safe version of pop? Is there a new burning desire for collaboration and collective action, which has been fading exponentially as we cocoon ourselves inside our own mediascapes? Have we, at reaching the end of the decade, turned around and assessed what we have been through and decided it was all so po-faced and that the decade needed a little tweak and a twist at the end? (Pedant Prolepsis – I know it’s not technically the end of the decade, but that’s how it works. Prince wrote 1999 not 2000 for a reason).

I was trying to pick apart this weird fusion of nostalgia and new media when I was at theSprout’s Xmas Jam in Cardiff on Sunday. Midway through the night, Inconsiderate Parking invited The Kamikaze Veterans on stage at the end of their set. This collective of young people then blasted out Killing In The Name and it clicked.

It’s fun; it’s all just a bit of fun, a cheeky V-sign at our pop culture. That’s the reason, yes it’s a campaign that could only have been in the last couple of years, but people have always enjoyed throwing a spanner in the works and this is just another prank in a long line of them.

The campaign is currently succeeding, RATM are top in the midweek charts. Today though marks the physical release of McElderry’s cover of The Climb, which will probably provide it with a big boost as Killing In The Name is not being released on CD, 7” or USB.

It could easily go to the wire, making this Sunday a slight return to days past, when the charts mattered and battles for the top spot were hard-fought. Maybe I’m getting old and nostalgic but I’m quite looking forward to it.

Tune into Radio1 from around 6.45pm to find out who wins.

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UPDATE

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The battle is over, the war has been won. On BBC Radio 1 last night the crown prince of inanity Scott Mills, dramatically revealed/needlessly strung out the result of that antiquity of pop, the chart battle. Cue Facebook status overload and Twitter melt down.

They all conveyed the message that lo and behold, just like those Bostonians kicking tea into a harbour, the plucky Yanks have overcome the biggest of British empires.

Rage Against The Machine are this year’s Christmas number one, with poor old Geordie warbler Joe McElderry having to settle for so-so silver.

Whether you see this is a victory for democracy or cynicism, what is inarguable is the passion Britain still has for music and I think we can all raise a glass of strictly-in-no-way-alcoholic mulled wine to that.

Now how am I going to explain this to Nan over Christmas dinner…?

5 Comments – Postiwch sylw

Sam (Sub-Editor)

Rhoddwyd sylw 29 mis yn ôl - 16th December 2009 - 15:20pm

the link below is to the video of Inconsiderate Parking and The Kamikaze Veterans performace at theSprout Xmas Jam. It has the naughty words at the end of the performance so...

IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED DON'T CLICK ON THE LINK AND THEN START MOANING ABOUT HOW INAPPROPRIATE IT IS, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED... INNIT.

rob inconsiderate parker

Rhoddwyd sylw 29 mis yn ôl - 16th December 2009 - 15:21pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uFtZbkqGYo

Scattered

Rhoddwyd sylw 29 mis yn ôl - 17th December 2009 - 04:43am

Cowell: "I think it's quite a cynical campaign geared at me that is actually going to spoil the party for these three."

Um, yeah... that's kind of the idea. What size chest are those trousers, by the way?

What always interests me is that the very people who lambast the likes of X Factor and Big Brother are the very same ones who tune in with their other halves of an evening "because the missus likes it".

But I think the whole reality TV era is winding down. Personally I would have pulled the plug on the whole thing with the death of Jade Goody as it seemed apt that it should end then.

Nothing makes me look around the room to see if anyone else is able to believe what they're being fed as when those four smug judges come through the smoke on X Factor like demi-gods. And if I pick up the girlfriend's copy of Heat one more time to find Cheryl bloody Cole on every fourth page... oh, um, I mean, only to know one's enemy, you understand.