Rage Against the Machine Takes the Christmas No 1 Spot – Simon Cowell’s Head Explodes

goodness MJ, you finally found out about this?? its been the headline story in the UK all week, and im proud to say i was one of the 950,000 members in that FB goup and done my bit by downloading 5 copies
RAGEEEEEEE !!!!

Seems I’m the first to comment and I’ll share what will probably be an unpopular opinion here, but I’m really glad that some bands original song took the 1st place over a cover or a song written by someone else than the singer/band.

What a ridiculous waste of money this contest was. Simon should have just said that for every song of Joe’s downloaded, he’d donate money to a charity. Then maybe this would have been put this contest in proper perspective. If people are really so opposed to manufactured pop, why are they watching X Factor?

GO RATM….

wow, I feel a little sorry for Joe, but he seems to understand that it was not against him but establishment. Yeah, I would like to be a fly on the wall when Simon got the news

lostinidol, but from what I understand, RATM is also donating to charity?
Well, even Sir Paul was on their side

Oh, I doubt Simon is going to lose any sleep over this. Really. Joe still beat all other songs on the chart. 450,000 sales in 6 days is not a small number. And we all know money is not an issue here. Simon earned so much money with X Factor. Commercials, money from voting (It’s not free to vote!) and who knows what else. Money from this single is just a change for Simon.

I’m all for healthy competition for Christmas #1, but this RATM campaign was very pathetic. Now, if some well known artists released their new hits just before Christmas, that would be a great chart battle.

It was reported this morning that Joe and his family will go on vacation to Austria after Christmas. Simon Cowell will pay for everything.

goodness MJ, you finally found out about this?? its been the headline story in the UK all week, and im proud to say i was one of the 950,000 members in that FB goup and done my bit by downloading 5 copies
RAGEEEEEEE !!!!

I guess you don’t read my headlines thread. I’ve posted tons of stories about it all week.

OH YEAH.

\m/

So SuBo lost Britains talent show and now the number 1 song is a grass roots campaign to oust Simon’s force field. Someone manipulates and someone manipulates back and the only people hurt are the idiots who spent money for 5 downloads they didn’t need.

It’s this kind of stuff and all the peripheral stuff around AI that will kill the shows in the end. It all becomes a silly over-invested game and the real loosers are the hundreds of viewers that really think what they do counts in the long run.

And who in the name of all things holy would pick an utterly crap Miley Cyrus song to cover in the first place. Simon, if you ever had any taste it has long since evaporated. I’m so glad my TV has a mute feature….

tess, but the money those people spent will go to charity, so it’s not wasted. Plus, I think it was something more than just about a singing contest.

agathe.hb
12/20/2009 at 5:19 pm

Who is giving what to Charity. And was this announced ahead of time?

well, I have read on the facebook, the group that started the whole thing donates the money to the Shelter and RATM also offered to donate their royalties from this to charity

ratm aren’t what they used to be. Good times though, back in the days.

Yes a spectacle monopolized
They hold the reins and stole your eyes

It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here
what better time than now

can’t stop us now

agathe.hb is correct. RATM has always been in it to help resolve social injustice.

Thank you mj for all the coverage (and the hilarious headline!)

What a ridiculous waste of money this contest was. Simon should have just said that for every song of Joe’s downloaded, he’d donate money to a charity. Then maybe this would have been put this contest in proper perspective. If people are really so opposed to manufactured pop, why are they watching X Factor?

Not everyone in the UK watches or likes X-Factor. Even many of those who like X-Factor were very angry at Simon for the way he manipulated Lucie Jones out while saving Jedward (purely for ratings since they’re like to drop once Jedward were eliminated) or for his obvious overpimping of Danyl Johnson.

What is the proper perspective anyway? It’s quite telling when the actual XF winner, Joe McElderry, is completely gracious about the whole matter while Mr. Gazillionaire Simon Cowell is the one grousing about the anti-XF campaign as being “very Scrooge” and ruining a young man’s dream. I don’t know who’s dream it was, but I seriously doubt Joe dreamt that he’d have a #1 single at Christmas covering a Miley Cyrus song.

As for the campaign being a waste of money, I believe RATM has stated on the record several times that they are donating the proceeds to charity. They recognize their song was chosen for this protest because of its very anti-establishment lyrics – “And now you do what they told ya, now you’re under control”, “F- you, I won’t do what you tell me!”

Nice Christmas song. If you look at the list of winners on Wikipedia in past years, this is the bottom of the barrel. Kinda like when that “pimp” song won the best song at the Academy Awards.

What is the proper perspective anyway?

The proper perspective, in my estimation, would be to realize that RATM is a major group signed to a major label…Sony. Sony is a division of BMG, which just happens to be the same record giant Cowell works for. Imagine that. So, RATM is donating their 3% cut of each download to charity. Honestly, good for them. Are Sony or iTunes donating their 97% cut? Probably not. So who made the money on all these sales? Sony, iTunes and Cowell. That ought to teach them a lesson.

So who made the money on all these sales? Sony, iTunes and Cowell. That ought to teach them a lesson.

Are you sure Simon directly gets money from this? Is so, very interesting indeed…

I feel bad for Joe, he’s caught in the middle of all of this. He seems like a nice young man judging from some of the interviews and behind the scene videos I watched. It’s just bad luck on him that the chosen song wasn’t that good (too pop, it could have been more rock like Don’t Stop Believing) and that the campaign was organized this year.

I think competition is good. I’d probably be on the side of the campaigners if they hadn’t chosen such a dreadful song (I guess they chose KITN because it’s the least Christmas song ever) and if Joe hadn’t won since he’s my fave ever since.

So I hope RATM makes good on their promises — I heard reports last week that they are donating ALL proceeds to charity; now it’s just a LARGE portion. And I guess they have to go to UK for a FREE GIG; they did not say when in 2010. They’re probably asking themselves what they got into. At least they got free publicity and some albums sold.

Are you sure Simon directly gets money from this? Is so, very interesting indeed’ ¦

I’m not saying that Simon is getting money from RATM sales, but the parent to his label is.

Let’s look at last year. Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley versus Burke. Guess the label of both Cohen and Buckley. Sony. And in fact, Leonard Cohen doesn’t even own the rights to the song Hallelujah, Sony Publishing does. Anyone see a pattern here?

Hell, yeah! I’m in the US but I’ll be downloading it now even though I have it already.

Joe deserved better than this.

RATM, McCartney, the FB campaign are all asses.

Ultimately the “failure” to have the Christmas #1 will be hung on Joe’s neck and that’s quite unfair.

Joe is a nice guy, maybe a bit naive and wouldn’t have been served if he was anything except gracious. In fact, I suspect people could sense how he’d take losing out and it gave themselves permission to screw him over.

What I’m worried about is arguably the second biggest evil in the music industry: the media. Joe did not win first place, and the media will be all over his nuts about that. That’s the worst loss, and it’s almost inevitable.

Joe is gonna be the next Kris Allen, heckled by the media for something he didn’t do. How often are you gonna hear Kris’s name in the media without hearing Adam? Kris got a lot of flak for being “the guy who beat Adam Lambert” and Joe will likely have some of his career being known as “the X Factor winner who failed to get #1″.

Nothing against RATM that I didn’t already have, though. Congratulations to them. I wish them the best, but I hope the media gets restructured so it won’t get on Joe’s case.

The media surrounding Joe will be sooooooo obnoxious. Poor guy. It’s all Simon’s fault, that egomaniacal baby eater. If he weren’t so big, Joe wouldn’t have been unnecessarily attacked by a pretentious Facebook campaign.

Here’s Joe being interviewed right after he got no.2. He seems okay with it.

BBC Switch

It’s too bad that Rage couldn’t have done this with some new material. They had to rely on their old stuff to make up for the fact that they are hardly relevant in today’s music scene. Don’t get me wrong…I like their music. But, I think that it just makes them look like bullies and cheats to do this to a young kid. What does it really accomplish?

Good interview and good response. He was honest when he said he was disappointed, but he wasn’t down about it. Glad he’s more mature than me about it.

Reading RATM fan comments on that page can be stupid annoying. I don’t think trolling should just be shrugged off. Shouldn’t be fed or walked into, either. But there was that one RATM fan who wished him the best and said he deserved #1 so props to that fan for being rational and mature .

Also glad he doesn’t pronounce his name “MAC-el-DER-ry”, that’s kinda weird.

@IdolThoughts, since I can’t quote, to be fair, I don’t think RATM deliberately did it to defeat Simon, I think that was a decision made by some fans.

Upon taking the number one slot RATM rallied to their website saying, ‘This is a victory for music, a victory for the people. We’ve shown that we can make a difference and that you don’t have a right to Number One just because Simon Cowell says so, especially with a bad cover!’  The band will make good on a promise they made to play a free show if they went to the top of the charts. Speaking to Radio 1, singer Zack De La Rocha said, “We will definitely be there to celebrate with everyone in the UK.”

Sounds pretty deliberate to me even if they didn’t inspire it directly. It is a bold move and is consistent with Rage’s perspective on music etc. It just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because it’s this kid’s debut and just because he’s an X Factor alum he is proclaimed not fit for the music world. I just think that kind of snobbery is lame. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it ya know? Maybe I’m just getting old.

While I’m amused re: Cowell, this really isn’t about him or Joe or RATM. It’s a political message, and a drive by nearly a million people that raised over $100,000 for a charity. I think the CNN article was pretty clear, IMO. Sorry I can’t seem to embed the link tho. http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/20/facebook.cowell.christmas/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Just adding, with all the war and killing in the world, how can their message not still be relevant? I think history will look back and find this song far more relevant than some Miley remake, YMMV. Sorry, end rant

We’ve shown that we can make a difference and that you don’t have a right to Number One just because Simon Cowell says so, especially with a bad cover!

Kinda sad how they think this is “making a difference” when there’s so many other more worthy causes in the world. *shakes head*.

Pretentious, and that’s where it gets personal, too.

Ugh, these are the kinds of things that make it so hard to respect media people. Was it a member of a band who did that, or just a PR person? I mean, seriously, that’s a pretty bad thing to say.

Sounds pretty deliberate to me even if they didn’t inspire it directly. It is a bold move and is consistent with Rage’s perspective on music etc.

Or consistent with Sony’s plan to make money. I don’t see how RATM can be seen as so anti-establishment when they are laying down with the biggest impediment to quality in music, Sony. Plus they cloaked themselves in some pointless contest as way to garner fan support. Oh wait, that’s what Simon does, puts on a contest to gain fan support.

thx for putting both songs up. Frankly, I can’t imagine having either on my ipod. At first I thought that The Climb was going to be decent b/c that guy Joe has a very clean tone quality–far better than Miley Cyrus, in fact. But then I got bored with it and realized that Miley’s is a far better version because her imperfect, limited voice matches the message of the song so well.

BTW–Have they officially run out of songs? Why do a cover of a song that was a hit so recently?

Also–regarding the conspiracy–good for the conspirators. I’m impressed that there were that many downloads in the UK aimed to defeat the prefabricatory machine.

Ultimately the ‘failure’  to have the Christmas #1 will be hung on Joe’s neck and that’s quite unfair.

Do you really think so? I don’t… but then again, I’ve never felt that the performance of any Idol/XF winner’s coronation single is indicative of their true musical talent and career potential.

Personally, I think if Joe McElderry’s fans take the attitude that it’s no big deal and move on to just support his concerts and debut CD, that the media at large will have little to grouse about. If the fans can’t let this incident go, then your statement WILL become a self-fulfilling prophecy with the media having good reason to dwell on it.

BTW’“Have they officially run out of songs? Why do a cover of a song that was a hit so recently?

It seems to be a UK thing to do covers of hit American songs and promote them as new singles. West Life recently did it with a Daughtry song.

Just adding, with all the war and killing in the world, how can their message not still be relevant? I think history will look back and find this song far more relevant than some Miley remake, YMMV. Sorry, end rant

I didn’t say that the lyrics were irrelevant. I merely stated that RATM is not currently relevant in the music world. And you are right…their lyrics might be very meaningful, but that was not the intent or the highlight of this promotion sadly. It was to top a chart so that an 18 year old kid would not get #1.

This contest should be called “Give More Money to The Machine” LOL.

Joe wasn’t going to have 1 million downloads in his first week, so the fact that RATM got 500K downloads only served as downloads for whichever corporation benefits from those sales. If that corporation is indeed Sony, then this grassroots movement obviously did NOT do their homework, with Sony having the last laugh. Sony probably even fed the news of this “protest” to the news outlets themselves – “thanks for doubling our sales volume!”.

If you want to make a statement about Simon & TPTB dictating music sales, then the alternative selection should have been an up and coming INDIE band, not associated with a major label or parent corp, with heartfelt homegrown lyrics about their david v goliath story. Now that would have garnered my download.

Personally, I find the whole thing really funny. First, who cares about a #1 Christmas single. Second, neither artist deserved the top spot more than any other. Joe wasn’t entitled to anything just because he finished first on a lame reality show.

A lot of people hate the American Idol/X Factor pop machine. The fact it may not have been a perfect message is irrelevant. I’m sure people just enjoyed giving the middle finger to Simon. Why should we deny or begrudge the Brits a little joy at Christmas.

I guess you don’t read my headlines thread. I’ve posted tons of stories about it all week.

whoop! no i havent sorry…

I feel bad for Joe, who seems like a nice, sweet lad (albeit, very dull and charisma free).

i guess you havent seen this article then http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/2778291/X-Factor-star-blasts-rival-Rages-riffage.html with a picture of Joe throwing darts at a picture of RATM frontman Zach De La Rocha