Tags
billy mack, christmas, jo mcelderry, killing in the name, lloyd daniels, love actually, miley cyrus, number one, olly murs, rage against the machine, simon cowell, singles chart, sony, spice girls, the climb, uk, x factor
So in case you’re not already aware The X Factor ended the other night in Britain, with Joe McElderry crowned this years winner (yay!). Anyway, since the inception of the show, that years winner has pretty much been guaranteed the much-talked about Christmas Number One spot on the UK Singles Chart which has historically been the biggest selling week of the year, and a significant accomplishment for any act.
The Spice Girls, for instance, had three consecutive Christmas Number Ones, a stat that was brought up again and again in tributes to them. Also, remember Love Actually? The Billy Mack storyline is based around the idea of him trying to hit the Christmas Number One. This is a cultural touchstone in the UK that The X Factor has kind of taken the excitement out of by monopolising.
That being said, I’d be lacking if I didn’t point out that this is entirely the doing of the masses. Should Britons at large decide to purchase a better song during the holidays then that song would be the Christmas Number One. Basically, it’s their own damn fault so there’s really little point in complaining about it.
Anyway, this brings us to this year when The X Factor winner, the aforementioned Joe McElderry, is releasing a cover of Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb,” which is actually better than last years song which saw Alexandra Burke covering “Hallelujah.” Ugh. So a campaign has been going this year to get Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” to number one via iTunes. This is supposed to prove a point or something. The problem is that Rage Against The Machine are signed to the Sony Music label. THE SAME LABEL AS X FACTOR WINNER JOE MCELDERRY!
What a sodding waste of time. Here is a helpful flow chat showing why this is ridiculous.
SERIOUSLY!!! This is the kind of thing is a marketers dream. I wouldn’t even be that surprised if it had all been manufactured at Sony HQ months ago. It generates publicity like crazy and is essentially a license to print money for Sony Music over the festive season. It’s a big “OK everyone, some idiot picked one of our own songs to spearhead The X Factor backlash campaign, Christmas bonuses are back on!!” Amazing.
And where does poor Lloyd Daniels, my – admittedly rather embarrassing – X Factor crush object fit into all this?
Nowhere actually. Poor Lloyd.
As for runner-up Olly Murs, while I did think Joe deserved to win The X Factor, you couldn’t not feel bad for the adorable Mr. Murs as he sang his heart out on his turn at “The Climb.” Especially when he sang the line “Always gonna be an uphill battle, sometimes I’m gonna have to lose” and you could see he knew he wasn’t going to win the thing. I totally cried with him. THIS IS WHAT REALITY-BASED PROGRAMMING IS ALL ABOUT. Click here to view (Tears at 2:46).
That or laughing at someone else’s embarrassment.
Sidenote. Why do they have to sing the same song? It doesn’t actually do either of them any favours but in this case particularly not Olly. They should each get their own song suited to their talents. That would make the show much better I think.
Oh, also Olly was hot.
And I’m less embarrassed to admit that than with Lloyd.