Rage Against The Machine Channels Ultimate Chick Flick “Love, Actually”
The story sounded familiar from the beginning. With the urging of Simon Cowell, his “X Factor” winner Joe McElderry was well on his way to having the Number One Christmas track in the UK. A Facebook group spearheaded a campaign to have political hard-rockers Rage Against The Machine’s 1992 single “Killing in the Name” beat out the television talent show winner. A statement for the group wrote, “Fed up of [sic] Simon Cowell’s latest karaoke act being Christmas No. 1? Me too…So who’s up for a massive purchase of the track “Killing in the Name” as a protest to the X Factor monotony?”
Cowell has never been afraid to put up money to have his acts go big. Look at Susan Boyle. He also arranged for final contestant Stacey Solomon to get decked out in over $160,000 worth of diamonds for the show, and she didn’t even win. So politico-rockers commonly known simply as “Rage” staged a coup.
"Wait, we did WHAT?"
Did they realize that the same thing was done in the Ultimate Chick Flick, 2003’s “Love, Actually”? In that movie, aging rocker Billy Mack (played by Bill Nighy) recorded a Christmas variation on The Troggs’ hit “Love Is All Around”, renaming it “Christmas Is All Around”. He vowed to do anything to have it beat fictional boy-band Blue out of the top spot, even though he referred to his own recording as a “festering turd of a record”. He promised that, if he won, he would perform in the nude—live—on television. His unusual campaign to win the number one spot succeeded, and he kept his word, performing only in cowboy boots and a well-placed guitar.
Rage Against THe Machine Followed THIS GUY'S Lead.
This is a story that every straight woman and gay man knows. Some of us can recite the movie from start to finish.
But this is probably not what Rage’s Tom Morello had in mind when he began his war with the UK’s version (which came first, by the way) of “American Idol”. He’d probably be horrified by the comparison. Rage Against the Machine is not exactly known for sappy love ballads and weepy stories—unless they bring attention to some kind of worldwide injustice.
And so, without a Christmas album coming out, Rage raged on. Cowell referred to the whole thing as “stupid” and “cynical”. Fans called it sabotage. Cowell’s money couldn’t buy him out of this. It was war!
Tom Morello gave a last-ditch attempt to overtake McElderry by (naturally) tweeting. He wrote, “Rage’s Killing in the Name & the X-Factor’s goofy Christmas single are neck and neck for the num one spot on the UK chart. England! Now is your time.”
And it worked. “Killing in the Name” was downloaded over 500,000 times in the past week, while McElderry’s Miley Cyrus cover sold 450,000. And the winner is…
(drumroll, please)
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE!
They must be so proud to have succeeded where only an aging fictitious rocker and his ridiculous cover song had prevailed before.
No word yet on whether or not Rage intends to perform “Killing in the Name” nude on Christmas Eve.