RATM steals the glory! Guardian.co.uk reports that Killing In The Name has won the battle for Christmas top spot on the basis of downloads only. It sold about 500,000 copies last week, approximately 50,000 more than The Climb, X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s earnest ballad. Campaign initiator 35 year old Jon Morter claims that the choice of a relatively obscure Miley Cyrus cover for McElderry’s single helped the Rage campaign: “If he had released Don’t Stop Believing (the Journey song McElderry sang in an X Factor heat) we would have been dead and buried.” Hopefully Morter’s statement against pansy-ass cover songs has taught the ‘powers that be’ a lesson in song choice! Anarchy has triumphed under the ironic banner of a song that says “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me”. The success of Morter’s facebook campaign, which was assisted by twitter, is a testament to the strength of social media: used in this case as a tool to unite a collective in a bid to topple the status quo. In this battle, the internet has emerged as master in command.

The X Factor winner has been announced and Joe McElderry is likely to follow the trend of the last few years by achieving the No 1 single this Christmas. It’s a bummer, especially when McElderry’s song is not even original. The Climb, owned by Sony Music Entertainment, is a country pop song performed by American recording artist and actress Miley Cyrus for the 2009 film Hannah Montana: The Movie. Lameness personified. One of the biggest criticisms of X Factor is the karaoke nature of the show, in which contestants perform renditions of songs by successful pop artists. And a karaoke Christmas single merely confirms this view. That is why, this year, a facebook campaign has been launched by Tracy and Jon Morter, entitled “Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No 1″. (more…)