I’ve been putting off writing an article on NME for a rather long time now. I’ve been hoping, nay preying, to appear on one of their enthralling Cool Lists for many years and I thought perhaps criticising there lazy tabloid journalism would be a sure way of ending my hopes of that accolade. That was until I read Luke Lewis’s internet article about the massively popular Rage Against The X-Factor campaign, then I thought you know what? There is no way in hell I’d ever be NME-worthy cool anyway. I’ll just hope to be spotted vomiting on Pete(r) Doherty and hopefully NME will twig that the pastey little gits powers of genius actually stem from the contents of other pastey little gits stomachs being sprayed periodically into his uber-talented mush.
I originally joined the Rage Against The X Factor group when it was on about 20,000 members. I’ve watched it steadily grow through the last 5 days or so and, as I write this, it’s currently hovering around the 430,000, a remarkable achievement. I fully intend to buy the single 3 times over next week from 7Digital, iTunes and Play. I am not doing this because I hate the X Factor. The X Factor doesn’t bother me in the slightest. In fact those two spiky haired twerps with one name are some of the accidentliest hilarious spectacles I’ve seen since first laying eyes on R Kelly’s Hip-Hopera Trapped In The Closet. I am going to buy Rage Against The Machines Killing In The Name because the idea of it being Christmas number 1, or even number 2, is fucking funny.
There is absolutely no reason why it’s a bad campaign. The group has been affiliated with the charity Shelter, which I believe is getting many donations through the group. This tied with the inevitable increase in X Factor single sales, which also donates proceeds to charity, the benefits are great for the non-profit sector. The song is an amazing one, and was criminally overlooked for number one back in 1992 by Charles and Eddie’s Would I Lie To You. Also how fun is it going to be trying to explain to your Nan at Christmas time who Rage against the machine are!? When Kate Thornton is on ‘Top 100 Quirky Moments of the Noughties’ in 8 or so years time, pointlessly explaining how nobody saw it coming, I will still be laughing.
Luke Lewis’s article is typical of NME’s elitist stance on music. Whenever I’ve read the magazine I can’t help but cower up at the sky every few moments in fear that the gods at NME headquarters will ambush me and my iPod for listening to Mika (you’ve got to admit its catchy) then kidnap me, place me in a room in Shoreditch naked but for the words ‘I’m not worthy’ scrawled in my own blood across my forehead, and encourage men with skinny jeans to laugh at me until my whole feeling of individuality has been ripped away from me and I’m left weeping, pounding the ground and cursing my affection for Snow Patrol.
The article starts off by insulting all members of the group, suggesting we’re all like ‘Kevin the Teenager’ (despite later slating the choice of song for being too old) then goes on to speculate the Simon Cowell ‘probably has shares in Sony’ and therefore will still be making money off the sale of the single. That’s not journalism, that’s speculation and even if it’s true I’m sure Cowell will see about 25p of the £400,000 odd pounds RATM would need to grace the coveted spot.
Do you think such a negative article would have been written if the group was trying to get one of NME’s flavour of the moment’s to get to number one? Probably not, but hey, I don’t like to speculate. Mr Lewis doesn’t mention the charity angle at all and that’s a shame. He does make some interesting points on the hypocrisy of it all. But anyone who’s been on the group page has read hundreds of people talking about the irony of it all (in many cases much more convincingly than NME) yet has chosen to continue recruiting and promoting anyway. And sure the song is a call to arms and wasn’t intended to be used in this way, but I’m sure Zach De La Rocha doesn’t give a flying fuck, and the suggestion of racism is just inflammatory bullshit. The kind you’d expect at a secondary school debate when all rational arguments have been used up.
The article explains how it is all pointless really (he even handily puts it right in the title) ‘because Even if all 300,000 members of the RATM Facebook group bought the track – which of course they won't – it'd still be dwarfed by the inevitable monster sales of Joe McElderry's winning song’. He’s right. Fuck it. Let’s give up. Let’s all 400,000+ give up. Luke Lewis told us to. Because what’s really the point of doing anything like this? To loosen an increasingly stale formats grip on the charts? To try and damage Simon Cowell’s Susan Boyle sized ego? To hear ‘fuck’ on the radio on Christmas day? To see your disgustingly right wing Aunt and Uncle bitch and moan about it at the dinner table whilst casually throwing racial slurs like they were asking for more roast potatoes? Whatever the reason it’s generally just a good bit of fun, something the NME has forgotten about in the last 10 years or so.
I’ll go further into the NME another time because, well, I just can’t help myself. But for now I’d urge anyone reading this between December 13th and December 20th to buy ‘Killing In The Name’, even if it’s just to irritate Luke Lewis at NME.
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See the original article and make your own mind up here
