Musical Passion Laying the Smackdown on Blind Consumerism

I thought about not writing about the ongoing battle between Rage Against the Machine and Simon Cowell's "The X Factor" (UK version of American Idol), mostly because it was happening across the pond; but things are getting good.

To give the short version of the story, a facebook group devoted to protesting the whole "X Factor" movement and commercialized bullshit popped up and shot straight to over 800,000 members. Simon's been too busy parading his "X Factor" winner, Joe McElderry, around to much to care about Facebook. McElderry was pegged to have the number one Christmas song without contest....until Tom Morello and Rage got involved.

In an interview with NME, Morello said that by buying "Killing In The Name", fans are effectively voting against The X Factor and other reality TV programs like it. He added that he felt the campaign was a "wonderful dose of anarchy and the rebel anthem song will transcend the Christmas holidays."

Rage Against The Machine performed 'Killing In The Name' live on British radio this morning (December 17), including full swearing in the chorus, as their Christmas Number One battle with The X Factor escalated. Interviewed on BBC 5live, the band took the opportunity to criticise Simon Cowell before playing their song live down from the line from Los Angeles.

Despite being asked to perform a "radio edit", singer Zack de la Rocha slipped into the full "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me" lyrics, resulting in the station pulling the plug. De la Rocha attacked Cowell, saying: "Simon is an interesting character. He seems to have profited greatly off humiliating people on live television and has a unique position of capturing the attention of people on television, but also the airwaves. We see this campaign as a necessary break of that control."

Meanwhile guitarist Tom Morello explained why the band had decided to back the fan-led campaign. "People are tired of being spoon fed one schmaltzy ballad after another," he said. "They want to take back their own charts. We're honored they've chosen our song to be the rebel anthem to topple The X Factor monopoly.

He Continued, "people aren't buying 'Killing In The Name' to protest a record coming out on a major company. We wrote 'Killing In The Name' in a small industrial slum in Los Angeles. The X Factor song is written by a cabal of overpaid songwriters to shove the schmaltzy business down your throats. So there are two very different choices. The thing the listeners need to know is, it's a really close race and its a real liberating musical revolution and we’re honored to be a part of it."

Now I'm not a gambler, but just in case you are, "Killing In The Name" recently became the bookies favorite to bag the Christmas Number One slot. As of this writing, RATM is beating Simon and his X Factor puppet by close to 37,000 units. The number sounds like a lot, but X Factor winner Joe McElderry's, "The Climb", had it's physical release yesterday and is expected to sell very well in the closing half of the week. Final numbers will be revealed on Sunday.