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Now, released in November of 1992, the band's first commercial single,
Rage Against the Machine's song, "Killing in the Name" would become the group's signature track.
The guitar riff and expletive laden outro of the song made it memorable. It would be
inspired by the deadly LA riots of 1992 as well as the Rodney King beating. The song would take
aim at institutional racism and the brutality of the police. As you would expect, the large amount
of expletives in the song's outro prevented it from achieving much airplay in the United States.
The band found a huge following across the pond in Europe. The song would chart in the UK in 1993,
peaking at number 25. It would be strange that 15 years later, the song would make
a return to the UK charts but this time at the number 1 spot. It was something that was
really unthinkable and shocked a lot of people but how did it happen? Stay tuned to find out.
Christmas time is a big moment for musicians in the UK. It's a general rule of thumb in
the country that whatever song tops the charts during the holiday season,
will go on to become the biggest selling song of the year. This is a tradition that
dates back 50 years to the 70s when rock bands would put out Christmas theme songs or covers.
Come 2005, things started to change a bit in the UK. Now reality TV has been one of the
many scourge that has plagued television over the past 20 years and music shows
especially have exploded since American Idol's inception in the early 2000s. One
of those music shows was the Simon Cowell created X-Factor, which originally started
in the UK and migrated across the pond to America in the later part of the decade.
In the UK from 2005 to 2008, each season's winner of The X-Factor would always have
the number one song in the country come Christmas time. It was almost
like figuring out who was going to win the election of North Korea.
In 2008, radio DJ, John Mortar was sick of Simon Cowell's [bullshit] and launched an
online campaign to prevent that year's winner, Alexandra Burke from taking the number one spot.
He would urge people online to buy the Rick Astley song, "Never Gonna Give You Up" but
the campaign would ultimately fail. Astley's song would not even crack the top 50 in the UK,
peaking at number 73. Burke's cover of "Hallelujah" easily took the Number 1 spot
that year and became the biggest selling holiday single of all time in the UK.
Come 2009, things would change. In early December of 2009, the same DJ and his wife,
Tracy would launch a group on Facebook encouraging people to buy the song,
"Killing in the Name" before Christmas in order to prevent the winner of The X
Factor that year from taking the Number 1 spot. The campaign would ask people,
"Fed up of Simon Cowell's latest karaoke act being Christmas' Number 1? Me too. So who's
up for a mass purchase of the track, Killing in the Name" as a protest to the X-Factor monotony?"
The X-Factor winner that year was the person named
Joe McElderry who covered the Miley Cyrus song, "The Climb".
Now, the X-Factor song was promising to donate some of their profits to charity, while Rage
Against The X Factor campaign encouraged supporters to also give to charity. In fact,
a Just Giving page was created to raise money for the homeless charity and shelter,
which by December 20th of 2009 had already raised over $100,000 US in funds.
By the middle of December, the group reportedly had over 700,000 members on Facebook and the
campaign even caught the attention of Rage Against the Machine guitarist, Tom Morello who lent
his support saying, that achieving the Christmas Number 1 would be, as he put it, "A wonderful dose
of anarchy," and Morello even planned to donate royalties from the sales of the song to charity.
Morello wouldn't be the only high-profile musician giving their support to the
campaign as Dave Grohl, Them Crooked Vultures, Muse and even The Prodigy
also voiced their support for the campaign. Also lending their support was heavyweight,
Paul McCartney who coincidentally, also appeared on The X Factor with the finalists.
Simon Cowell, for his part, apparently responded to the campaign reportedly
calling it "stupid and cynical," but one thing that went unnoticed was that both,
the X Factor and Rage Against the Machine were both signed to record labels that were
part of Sony BMG. At the end of the day Sony would win regardless of the outcome.
The campaign received a lot of media attention in the UK but it would be the BBC who helped propel
the bands across the finish line. On December 17, 2009, BBC Radio 5 invited Rage Against the
Machine to perform their single, "Killing in the Name" live on the air for their breakfast show.
"Number 1 for Christmas, how would that be and what would you like to say to the potential
buyers listening?" "Well, I think it'd be kind of a wonderful statement. The kids in all over
the UK have responded to this incredible internet campaign and I think that it says something about
the real tensions that people are experiencing all over the UK, and the United States as well.
I think people just would love to hear a song that reflects some of the tensions that they're
experiencing in their daily lives. We're very excited about it." "Do you think it's a rage
against the manufactured pop business?" "Well, I mean this has been a real completely grassroots
campaign started by real fans of music. I think it's tapped into the silent majority of the
people in the UK are tired of being spoon-fed one schmaltzy ballad after another and they want to
take back their own charts. We are honoured that they've chosen our song to be the rebel anthem
to try to topple the X-Factor monopoly." "What about those guys who say it's on the same record
label as Simon Cowell so ultimately he will still benefit? He operates under the Sony umbrella."
"Yeah, well first of all, people are not buying 'Killing the Name' to protest a record coming out
on a company. We wrote on a major company, we wrote 'Killing the Name' in a small industrial
slum in Los Angeles. The X-Factor song was written by a cabal of overpaid song writers to shove that
schmaltzy business down your throats. So it's the two very different choices." "Simon is an
interesting character who seems to have profited greatly off humiliating people on live television
and as a unique position of someone who could not only, capture the attention of some people on
television but also the air waves. We see this as a necessary break in the chain of that control."
While frontman, Zack de la Rocha would censor the first few lines of the outro
he would scream the actual lyrics for the rest of the song. The performance stirred up so much
controversy that the BBC had to apologize following the performance. Remember guys,
there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?
So three days after the BBC performance, it was announced that "Killing in the
Name" had dethroned the X-Factor for that year, taking the Number 1 spot
with over 500,000 digital downloads. The irony would be that the following week,
the X-Factor winner Joe McElderry's cover of "The Climb" would take the Number One spot,
making it the last Number 1 song of the year. It was during that week, "Killing in the Name" fell
to the Number 2 spot before completely falling off the charts entering into the new year.
So, how do you guys feel about the campaign and do you think we could see more of this
in the future to show that rock and roll is still alive? Let me know in the comments and
be sure to hit the like and subscribe button as well as the bell notification icon. Take care.