The season is upon us once again. It’s that time of year when dad clambers into the loft and huffs and puffs the tattered cardboard box marked “XMAS” down to the living room. Ribbons are tied round every banister and baubles are hung on every branch. It’s a fight for whose toilet roll angel gets to go on the top of the tree, and the cat reluctantly adorns a tinsel collar. The whole country is buzzing as families travel by any means necessary, trains over counties and planes over seas, to be reunited for this special day.
Granny takes up her usual armchair and nods slowly in and out of dreams, while mum and dad dance around the kitchen in a not-quite-perfected choreographic sequence alive with boiling and roasting that results in the Christmas dinner. With occasional obscenities, bangs and crashes, miraculously it always comes together at the last minute. The house is filled with aromas good enough to tear kids of any age away from the “Morecambe and Wise” special showing yet again this year, and the family gathers round like lions to a wilder beast to devour the turkey. Over the jollities of paper hats, cracker toys and jokes of the expected low standard, Mum flicks on the radio to fill the dining room with the festive sounds of Rage against the Machine “Killing in the Name”.
What’s wrong? It all sounded pretty perfect up until that last bit didn’t it! However this picture of Christmas 2009 is not far wrong as this song swept to the top of our charts just in time for Christmas day. Following a head to head battle to diminish the domination of Simon Cowell and his finely oiled pop star making machine, for the first time in 3 years the Christmas number one was claimed by a band who had not been catapulted to success by the phenomenon that is the X Factor. Rage Against the Machine were backed by a couple who created a Facebook fan page with the hope to overthrow King Simon Cowell and his monarchy Lady Cheryl Cole and Lord Joe McElderry, this years winner who unfortunately missed out on his almost guaranteed number 1 hit.
Alarmingly, and going against the judgement of experts, the popularity of Rage’s rebellion and all that it stood for against the destruction of the music industry, struck a violent rock chord with thousands of people up and down the nation who began in their thousands to download and purchase the heavy based, head banging anthem containing more obscenities than all of mum and dad’s Christmas dinner bravados put together!
One must step back and assertively nod ones head in appreciation for the brave civilians who were behind this coop. It shows great courage to send a nation into turmoil, even if the song chosen to cause it is questionable, they have spoken up where so many have failed to. There is, however, one detail that seems to have slipped the nations minds as they obediently follow suit. By purchasing “Killing in the Name” and joining the ranks of the anti X Factor troupe, the only thing that has been achieved is yet another display of sheer conformity, rebelling against one leader only to fall in line behind another. The message of “thinking for ourselves” has been pushed aside, as we all run towards one team.
The real achievement must one day come from inside us all; it is a lesser-ventured ideal down in the pit of our beings known as “being an individual”. We must fight against the gravity-like urge to follow the ever profiting Sheppard’s and buy music we have listened to, sat back and thought, “do you know what, I actually quite like that”. The time will come when the Christmas chart will be a thing of wonder once again, not a ferocious battle of the titan that is X Factor and their latest “Let’s make a facebook group” rival.
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