DJ Scott Mills from Radio One has just announced that Rage Against The Machine have beaten X Factor winner Joe McElderry to the Christmas number one spot .
The 1992 song ‘Killing In The Name’ made an unbelievable comeback yesterday as it made up an 11000 download deficit and went on to defeat McElderry’s ‘The Climb‘ with a 52000 download margin . Their rock song was downloaded 502,000 times compared to McElderry’s pop cover which managed 450,000 copies, made-up of a combination of physical sales and downloads.
As reported on Live4ever, a massive campaign led by facebook users and supported by Sir Paul McCartney and NME magazine among others, lifted The Rage Against The Machine song into British chart history as it has become the first ever download only Christmas number one in the UK. It also managed to beat a record for largest one week download sales in UK chart history.
X factor winner Joe McElderry, who yesterday described the Los Angeles band’s track as “dreadful”, was supposed to appear on the chart-show, but failed to turn-up – after hearing in advance of his defeat.
In a statement on their website, Rage Against The Machine said: “WE DID IT! RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE IS XMAS NUMBER ONE. We’ve shown that we can make a difference and that you don’t have a right to Number One just because Simon Cowell says so, especially with a bad cover! Finally I would like to say thank you to all of you, we’ve raised £64,726.00 for Shelter at the time of writing this, the difference that this will make to peoples lives is truly amazing. We gotta take the power back – Rage Against The Machine – Merry Christmas.”
Rage Against The Machine are the first rock act to top the charts at Christmas since Queen’s classic hit ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ hit the top spot for a second time in 1991 following the death of Freddie Mercury.
Rage Against The Machine commented that they will fulfill their obligation and play the free UK gig in honour of claiming the top Xmas single chart spot .
UK Christmas Top 10:
1/ Rage Against The Machine – Killing In The Name
2/ Joe McElderry – The Climb
3/ Lady Gaga – Bad Romance
4/ Peter Kay’s Animated All-Star Band – Children In Need Medley
5/ 3OH!3 – Starstrukk
6/ Robbie Williams – You Know Me
7/ Cheryl Cole – 3 Words
8/ Rihanna – Russian Roulette
9/ Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’
10/ Black Eyed Peas – Meet Me Halfway
The single ‘Killing in the name of’ is from RATM’s 1992 self titled release:
Thank god we have some real music for Xmas number 1, just goes to show how powerful social media has become. I hope RATM have a comeback I’d love to catch them live again. There’s another interesting article about this here http://bit.ly/8UPCgV