It was announced earlier today that Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name" (the most overplayed song from one of the best albums of the 90's) is now the #1 song in the UK due to a Facebook campaign that was designed by a few BBC Radio One DJ's who didn't want the UK version of American Idol to score a "Christmas #1."
As I read further into this matter, the following factors seem to have played a part:
#1 On December 4th, Rage re-released "Killing In The Name" as an iTunes download with the proceeds going to some form of charity.
#2 It would appear that the winner of the show X Factor (the UK Idol of which Simon Cowell is either the show's host or a judge of some sort) has achieved "Christmas #1's" for the past 5 years. I'm still unable to understand why the #1 song during the week of Christmas is a big deal in the UK, but to each his own.. It's a big enough deal that it made headlines...
#3 Shortly after the BBC campaign launched, Tom Morello announced that Rage supports this campaign as a "wonderful dose of anarchy." Dave Grohl, Liam from Prodigy, McCartney, and the guys from Muse encouraged their fans to purchase the download as well.
#4 Earlier today, BBC announced this as the first download-only single to reach #1.
If this were a U.S. thing, Ellen DeGeneres would have probably devoted an entire week of her show trying to get her viewers to out-buy the Rage downloads. But that's neither here nor there...
It seems like I would've cared more if this happened 5 or 6 years ago, or if it was a U.S. #1 instead.. However, one thing for certain is that the UK charts don't lie, unlike American Idol, which was proven by the Sanjaya campaign of Spring 2007 (or TRL for that matter, who always lied about their results, proven by numerous events such as the campaign for New Kids On The Block's "Hangin' Tough" in March 1999). So in a way, Rage's #1 is quite gratifying, and perhaps a signifier of American Idol's impending and long overdue fall in popularity.
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