This blog never pays attention to the UK charts – but this past fortnight they’ve been near impossible to ignore. After four unchallenged years, reality TV show X Factor, steered by Simon Cowell, has lost its grip on the coveted Christmas Number One slot. Cowell’s 2009 horse, a clean-faced angel named Joe McElderry, was outpaced in the final furlongs by Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name. The mobilisers behind this pop revolution were not RATM, however, but the co-founders of a Facebook campaign.
It is a sensational story. But is RATM’s coronation at the top of the festive pops really worth celebrating? Is it a victory for music, set to go down as one of those seminal moments in pop history? Or is it actually the final proof of just how illogical and irrelevant the charts really have become? Below, in two contrasting opinion pieces, my friend Adrian Van Cooten sees the positives just as my glass becomes at least half-empty:
Adrian Van Cooten – This Could Be A Seminal Moment
RATM’s recent success in the Christmas charts has sent shockwaves through the music world. It’s been labelled the biggest chart upset in history. And, to a music fan that has felt alientated from the UK charts for the best part of a decade, the announcement on Sunday felt enormous.
But why? Well, it all goes back to 1991. That’s when a little band called Nirvana released a little album called Nevermind, the landscape of MTV and the music world having until then been dominated by hairbands, Michael Jackson and - in America at least - Garth Brooks. Existing in an alternate universe to this stale musical landscape, the appropriately-labelled Generation X were in the midst of mass unemployment, neglected and alientated by society. They felt disenfranchised by the music industry; when Nirvana came along, the band were readily elected as their posterboys.
Nirvana weren’t the best band in the world, but they resonated to the masses, opening up the charts to a galaxy of alternative music: Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc, etc… I could write a list for days. This was the era of ’grunge’ (I guess they had to call it something!). These artists spoke like us, looked like us, dressed liked us, shared our opinions and, well, wrote songs we could relate to - very much the opposite of X Factor superstars, in fact. I rarely see any chart artists that I can empathise with nowadays. Alternative music seems to have gone quite underground, existing only in obscure blogs (thanks Adrian!) and MySpace pages.
This time round in 2009, we are all the new disenfranchised and, when given a voice, we spoke in our thousands. Simon Cowell’s monopolisation over the Christmas No.1 was wrong: it took away the mystique and the competition of the UK charts. As a kid I used to listen intently to the Top 40, and would eagerly await the announcement of the new week’s No.1. It was genuinely thrilling; when Mr Cowell stole that mystique by pretty much appointing artists for the summit, it angered me. Where was the competiton? Charts stopped being about popular music, but instead the success of a TV program. That left a bitter taste.
In many ways there are a lot of similarities between 1991 and 2009. Just like a couple of decades back, today the artist whose label has the deepest pockets essentially gets catapulted by advertising, TV, radio and, yes, Spotify campaigns. And we have mass unemployment. Maybe it’s just a sign of the times, but maybe there really are deeper socio-economic repercussions here, deeper than the simple positions of a numbers-based music chart.
The RATM Facebook campaign has, against all odds, done great things here. It inspired competition (democracy) in the charts, it inspired people to buy records again – a tremondous feat - and I think it inspired a generation into believing truly anything is possible, no matter how slim the odds. Perhaps best of all, it restored the faith of lovers of alternative music, lovers like me. I feel RATM will usher in a whole new wave and approach to supporting a band/artist, as opposed to the purchasing of a single on the basis of mass-media hype surrounding a TV program. Kudos to RATM!
Richard Mellor – Has Pop Just Eaten Itself?
Few people dispute that X Factor’s hold on British pop music is unnatural: it’s a monopoly via the means of dramatic primetime TV, advertising and endless resources. I doubt that the 450,000 who bought Joe McElderry’s dire The Climb have enough personality to vaguely object to that assertion; unlike RATM, they’ll do exactly what I tell them. For being Christmas Number One no longer comes down to who has the best song, unlike those great clashes of yesteryear - Pet Shop Boys vs The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl in 1987 for example. Nope, today it’s defined by who has the most exposure. Put more simply, it’s dictated by who wins the year’s X Factor contest. Even this year’s charts.
Unquestionably, John and Tracy Morter’s toppling of the house that Cowell & co built made for thrilling viewing – this was David slaying Goliath, or the triumph of Cool Runnings’ Jamaican bobsleigh team. You felt that it wasn’t so much this song, with its emblematic “Fuck you…” line, as much as the name of the band was important. Rage - Against - The - Machine; the rage was everybody’s who had downloaded this emblematic single, while the machine was very much Cowell and his super-brand. This was a victory for decency: it told Cowell ‘no’: you can’t bludgeon your way to yuletide glory every year through brainwashing, through dominating the newswires, through intense marketing. No, Cowell, no!
My problem with all this zeal is that RATM’s – not that Zack and the band themselves did too much but ride along in bewildered appreciation – ascension of the charts is no less unnatural. In effect this whole campaign was more of the same: the mortified Morters brainwashing consumers into thinking they’d been brainwashed by X Factor; their campaign dominating the newswires due to a great idea, clever choice of song, and the very tenets of Facebook – mass, swift communication. And even - what I’d cynically label a marketing failsafe – a chosen charity on board. Ouch – how do you like them apples, Simon? I’d suggest Killing In The Name is Christmas Number One so that a point be made, rather than due the quality of the song.
Has the point been made? Yes and no. X Factor knows it needs to do more to win hearts and minds - but equally, any dunce can work out it’ll come back stronger next year; what’s more, all this outcry simply served to raise the show and its star greater publicity. Through brilliance of initiative and people power, and with the help of Mark Zuckerberg, the Morters briefly altered the pop hegemony – but they’ve made it no more natural, and in no way shown that being number one comes down to quality of a song. RATM’s anthem is better than Joe’s toilet paper - but that’s not really why it’s number one.
Worst of all, RATM’s song is owned by Sony – the company which employs Simon Cowell, who of course represents the runner-up, too. McElderry actually did very well, too: selling more copies - 450,000 – than all of his forbears bar Alexandra Burke, and then getting to play the mature runner-up to boot. Sony, Cowell, McElderry, RATM and Facebook are the real winners here, along with the Morters, social media visionaries that they’ve unwittingly become. But pop music fans? Have they really triumphed? I don’t think so.
Cowell and Sony remind me here of the Joker in a scene in Christopher Nolan’s semi-recent Batman film. Batman, Harvey Dent and Commissioner Gordon go to great, mass-mobilisation lengths to intercept a dastardly scheme by Heath Ledger’s Joker. They appear to succeed, victoriously slinging the villain in jail. Trouble is, the Joker saw them coming all along: he cheerfully proceeds to wreak far more devastating havoc from his cell. And then he breaks out, with sublime ease. To beat a foe like that, you need to come up with more than just raw aggression and anger. To beat Cowell and Sony, the same applies.
Adrian Van Cooten is a drummer in an excellent, upcoming band called Breakfast With Wolves. Check them out here.
Great post!!!
Tres Bien fait. I’m in the ‘Has Pop Just Eaten Itself?’ camp !
[...] music blog some of it was true! argues that the campaign was a seminal Web moment. So will social networks have the same effect in [...]
I think it was a seminal web moment… but someofitwastrue raise a good counter argument with good points.