I think we’re supposed to be taking sides for the current race for the prize of Christmas Number 1.  Presumably if you prefer your pop music to not be a chicken-in-a-basket piece of mediocrity spooned-fed to us from the scraps of a four month TV talent show, then I guess you’re supposed to be hoping that the spoiling tactics of the Facebook-generated campaign to get Rage Against The Machine to top the charts this yuletide will succeed.

Personally, I couldn’t give a baboon’s red bum as to which of the two records hits the top, as this competition is flawed for several reasons.  The primary one is that neither song is actually very good.

The viable alternative to a poor record ought to be a ruddy good one.  If last year’s X Factor had any positive outcome it was that new people were introduced to the works of Jeff Buckley, as sales of his version of Leonard Cohen‘s Hallelujah rocketed as people gave a group meh at Alexandra Burke’s overblown rendition.  If only a single person discovers the majesty of the Grace album that would not have done previously, then something wonderful has come from a televisual and musical pile of arse.

As a man now in his mid-30s, I am of the right age to have bought the Rage Against The Machine record the first time around.  Or indeed have taped the album off of a mate at the very least.  I did.  The tape is still tucked up in a drawer at the top of my house, with the inlay card appropriately crafted with some sort of made-up teenage font to make it look boss.  I thought it was great, and my teenage self pogoed at the indie discotheques countless times.

I’ve not bothered to trot up to check, but I’m betting that my excellent bespoke writing looks, upon revisiting, a bit shit.  This is precisely how Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name sounds now.  A bit shit.

Rage Against The Machine: forcing political and sociological change by, erm, jumping up and down a bit whilst shouting and slapping musical instruments.

Prior to its 2009 revival, the last time I heard the song was actually in the back of an acquaintance’s car at the early hours of the morning about two years ago.  It was infinitely preferable to the other God-awful heavy metal rawk the dullard was carrying in his motor.  Within 30 seconds the grin of warm nostalgia had transformed to one of rictus Joker mockery.  For anyone unaware of how the track sounds, it opens with some raucous guitar growling with the peculiar addition of a cowbell 30 seconds in, moves into some lyrical grrring about how all the police are racists because the odd one or two of them are also members of the Ku Klux Klan before a lot of shouting from a grown man about how he’s not going to do as he’s told, only with swear words.  At this last bit he works himself up into a heck of a tizz, until he finally can’t quite yell it anymore, so provides us with an expletive cherry on the top in the form of a larynx-ripping “motherfuckeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”  As protest song go it’s not as misguided as Boney-M’s Belfast, but it’s frankly ludicrous and deserves to be laughed at.

Boney-M's album Love For Sale features the track Belfast. It's of little relevance, but Lordy what disturbing cover art.

The band style themselves as revolutionaries, but The Communist Manifesto it ain’t.  As a song for teenagers to run to their bedrooms to and play loudly as a message for their parents, the mantra of “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” is nigh on perfect, but in essence it’s the same stubborn bottom-lip out message delivered in Billie Piper’s Because We Want To, which has no pretensions of being hugely politically savvy, though for the record I happen to think it’s a much underrated piece of punk pop two-fingery.

The question, therefore, is what do we achieve by dredging up this record and parading it is as thinking-person’s alternative to Simon Cowell’s latest shiny-toothed terpsichorean off the conveyor belt?  Well, we show ourselves up as snobs for starters, and also suggest that we are intellectually superior and that the X-Factor lot are a load of plebby sheeple.  Now, I’m more guilty of musical snobbery than yer average Joe McElderry naysayer, but ultimately making the chart battle into a war feeds the publicity and the success of the Cowell machine beyond its latest offering’s natural shelf life.  The protest against the protest will increase the sales of the Joe McElderry single beyond the level it might have otherwise achieved.

I also feel a bit for McElderry himself – well as sorry as it is possible to be who has just seen all his dreams come true.  The lad has not been off the telly this week, and seems a perfectly nice sort albeit as flavourless as his debut single.  Effectively he’s Cowell’s innocent pawn that’s been caught in the crossfire of all this, forced to defend The X Factor and its ilk whilst fending off interviewers attempts to rubbish the internet campaign to destroy what will almost certainly be his only shot ever at a number 1 hit single.  Luckily for him, it almost certainly won’t succeed anyway.  At time of writing Killing In The Name Of is leading the way on sales, but McElderry’s single is rapidly bridging the gap, and I hereby predict it will cross the divide and win the race for the prize.

If he's so rich, how come he can't afford a decent haircut? You could do your ironing on that.

And why shouldn’t it, frankly?  Alright, it’s rubbish- a good deal more rubbish than Rage Against The Machine – and it’s more than a little irksome that the Christmas number 1 is now governed every year by whomsoever emerges victorious from an annual talent contest.  However, the charts are a popularity contest and nothing else – whomsoever’s song is liked by the most people wins.  20 million people watched this week’s X Factor final, which by my reckoning makes that a pretty popular vote.  The success of Rage Against The Machine’s track, in 2009 at least, is down to the ironic fact that whatever is most popular is almost certainly the most unpopular also.  A vote for Rage Against The Machine is therefore a declaration of distaste at this year’s Cowell offering.  As much fun as it is to see someone trying to ruffle Cowell’s appallingly-trimmed feathers, the Facebook campaign for Rage Against The Machine is effectively a spoiling tactic.  It’s an attempt to spoil the fun of 20 million people.  And at Christmas as well.  To use the appropriate pantomime noise; booooooooooooooo.