Facebook Campaign Decides UK Christmas Music Charts

uglyduckling writes "A grassroots Facebook campaign has pushed the 1990s Rage Against the Machine song 'Killing in the Name Of' to the top of the British music charts for Christmas. The campaign was planned to prevent the X-Factor winner from charting Christmas number one, as has been the case for the past four years. It was supposedly a kick against the commercialism of Christmas and commercial dominance in the music scene, although Rage and the X-Factor winner Joe McElderry were actually signed to the same label. Despite this minor detail, it's interesting to note that this is the first song to reach the number one spot through downloads alone in the UK, and is a testament to the organizational power of social networking sites like Facebook. The Facebook group also asked for donations to charity, and has raised £70,000 for the homeless charity Shelter."

Comments

So?

[PopeRatzo]

Remember, the UK music charts are famous for being wonky and will react to minor fads pretty readily.

At any given time, the UK charts will have some old Elvis record, maybe something by Cliff Richards, an outtake from an Ozzie session. If a television program features some 1980's Flock of Seagulls horrorshow, it'll turn up on the UK charts next week. If you compare the UK charts with the much more influential US charts, you'd practically think they were in different countries or something.

When I was a kid, my brother (who's now a music critic) and I used to follow the music charts like rabbis study the Torah. We used to laugh our heads off over the goofy anomalies that would show up on the UK music charts.