Rage Against the Machine vs. Simon Cowell

Rage Against The Machine are rebels who humiliate Simon Cowell or just profit Sony?

(Rock n' Roll True Stories) Let's look at the infamous battle between the band Rage Against the Machine (RATM) and British reality show host Simon Cowell, creator of The X-Factor.

Every year since 2005 the winner of The X-Factor always had the Number 1 single come Xmas time, but in 2009 things changed. A grassroots campaign started by a UK DJ got people to buy the Rage Against the Machine song "Killing in the Name" from the group's 1992 debut record.

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The band's first commercial single, "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 was inspired by the Los Angeles Uprising and deadly anti-LAPD riots of 1992 stemming from the police beating of Black motorist Rodney King.

The song takes aim at institutional racism and police brutality. As one would expect, the many expletives in the song prevented it from achieving much commercial airplay in the United States.

But the L.A. band found a huge following in Europe. The song charted in the UK in 1993, peaking at Number 25. So it was strange that 15 years later, the song made a return to the charts -- this time at the Number 1 spot.

It was really unthinkable and shocked a lot of people, but how did it happen? Xmas is big for UK musicians. It's a general rule that whatever a song tops the charts during the holidays, it goes on to become the biggest selling song of the year.

This is a tradition that dates back a half century to the 1970s when rock bands would put out Christmas theme songs or covers. By 2005, things started to change. "Reality TV" had become one of the many scourges plaguing television with music shows exploding since American Idol's inception in the early 2000s.

One of those shows was Simon Cowell's X-Factor, which started in the UK and migrated to America in the later part of the decade. From 2005 to 2008 in the UK, each season's winner of The X-Factor would have the Number 1 song in the country come Xmas time.

It was almost like figuring out who was going to win an election in North Korea. In 2008, radio DJ John Mortar was sick of Simon Cowell's [BS] and launched an online campaign to prevent that year's winner, Alexandra Burke, from taking the Number 1 spot.

He urged people online to buy the horrible Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up" (Rick Roll), but the campaign ultimately failed. Rick Astley's song could not even crack the UK Top 50, 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 changed.

In December of 2009, the DJ Mortar and his wife Tracy launched a group on Facebook encouraging people to buy the song "Killing in the Name" before Christmas to prevent the winner of The X-Factor from taking the Number 1 spot.

The campaign asked 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 Joe McElderry, who covered the dull Miley Cyrus song, "The Climb." The X-Factor song was promising to donate some of their profits to charity, while the 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 US $100,000. By the middle of December, the group reportedly had over 700,000 members on Facebook, and the campaign caught the attention of Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

He lent his support, saying that achieving the Number 1 Christmas song would be, "A wonderful dose of anarchy." Morello planned to donate royalties from sales of the song to charity. He was not the only high-profile musician supporting the campaign.

Dave Grohl, Them Crooked Vultures, Muse, and The Prodigy also voiced their support for the campaign. Also lending support was heavyweight Beatle Paul McCartney, who coincidentally appeared on The X-Factor with the finalists.

Simon Cowell, for his part, responded to the campaign, reportedly calling it "stupid and cynical." But does rock make any real difference? Or are we just being played? One thing that went unnoticed was that both The X-Factor and Rage Against the Machine make money for Sony. Sony suits laughed all the way to the bank. Was Simon Cowell in on it all along?

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