Topic: Anti-X Factor campaign searches rise

[Clive]

A campaign to stop X Factor winner Joe McElderry becoming Christmas number one is gathering pace, according to search figures.
 
Searches for Rage Against The Machine, the band behind 1992 hit Killing In The Name Of, are on the rise according to web-monitoring firm Hitwise.

The reason for the interest is largely due to an online campaign to get the single into the Christmas number one slot ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry.

A Facebook group was set up earlier this month to back the campaign and it now boasts more than 715,000 members.

A statement on the group's page reads: "Are you getting fed up about the possibility of another X-Factor Christmas No.1? Us too... so we're going to do something about it!"

Members of the group are instructed to buy the single before Saturday 19 December and the campaign seems to be having an impact, according to Hitwise.

"Searches for the term 'Rage Against The Machine' increased by almost 600 per cent last week, and actually picked up a slightly higher volume than 'Joe McElderry'," said Robin Goad of Hitwise.

Also, the track is currently at the top of the iTunes download chart. X-Factor supremo Simon Cowell has dismissed the campaign as "cynical".

McElderry, an 18-year-old from South Shields, was announced as the winner of this years' X Factor after beating Olly Murs in the final over the weekend.

Nearly 20 million people watched McElderry, hailed as the 'new Cliff Richard', take the title. X Factor winners have dominated the Christmas number one spot for the past five years.

[Rik]

The what factor, Clive?

[sam]

there is also a journey campaign!

[GillE]

Some people have too much time on their hands.

[Simon]

Yes, and they watch the X Factor.  

[GillE]

 

[Clive]

On Sunday we went to a carol service with friends - no really!  They came back home with us for a few drinks but asked if they could watch the final of the X Factor since they had been following it from the beginning.  It was hard not to agree with their request so Mrs Clive and I spent a miserable 2 hours watching two blokes who could not sing a note in the right key and camoflaged the fact by using an echo chamber. Yet they were supposed to be the best out of all the hundreds of failures who had been performing in previous weeks.  Simon Cowell kept saying that whoever won last night would have the Christmas number one so it's almost worth buying a copy of rage against the machine to screw him up. 

[GillE]

Can someone explain to me what rage against the machine is, please?

Sorry to ask, but I'm not particularly 'hip'.  I recall embarrassing myself here once by asking what a Beyonce was  .

[sam]

RATM are not particularly hip... they are a rock band! :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_Against_the_Machine

Rage Against the Machine (often abbreviated as RATM or Rage)[1] is an American rock band formed during 1991 in Los Angeles, California. ....
The band's debut album, Rage Against the Machine, reached triple platinum status, driven by heavy radio play of the song "Killing in the Name," a heavy, driving track featuring only eight lines of lyrics. The "f*** You" version, which contains 17 iterations of the word f***, was once played on the BBC Radio 1 Top 40 singles show.[9] The album's cover featured Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, burning himself to death in Saigon in 1963 in protest of the murder of Buddhists by the US-backed Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm's regime. To promote the album and its core message of social justice and equality, the band went on tour, playing at Lollapalooza 1993 and as support for Suicidal Tendencies in Europe

They are a pretty good band... IMO... but they are probably most famous for  "Killing in the name" which the song people want people to buy.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkuOAY-S6OY

The other suggestion is a song by Journey - but tis just gonna split the buying. I'm sure I'll be logging onto iTunes to buy killing in the name later in the week...

[GillE]

Thanks Sam .

Now I'm wondering how such a band found itself in a Christmas #1 battle, especially against an X Factor winner.

What's going on?  Whatever happened to Slade v Wizzard?  I could understand that  .

[sam]

I don't think they planned to get into the battle.. its just the backlash by fans (big facebook group pushing it now too)

[Sandra]

A campaign to stop X Factor winner Joe McElderry becoming Christmas number one is gathering pace, according to search figures.

At first I was hoping that it was a campaign that I could happily join in with, then I read it fully and realised that it wasnt "A campaign to stop X Factor" 

[Rik]

I recall embarrassing myself here once by asking what a Beyonce was  .

Wasn't that the backing track to Rubber Ball?

[GillE]

I've just heard the Rage Against The Machine track.  Bilge - utter bilge.  There's more musicality in an ABBA sound check.  Heck, there's more musicality in the sound of a dentist's drill, and I should know because I had one new filling and a loose filling replaced today.

[Simon]

I have to agree about the RATM track. I heard it when it first came out, and thought it was crap then too!