Last Christmas I gave you a Christmas number one.   Well technically Rage Against The Machine, myself and my husband did.   We raged against the machine, the X Factor machine, and actually somehow managed to pull it off.
We are not music snobs as some have speculated,  in fact in our early days Jon bought me the greatest hits of Tight Fit! Don’t let him know I told you that.  Put Strike U Sure Do on and I’m dancing round the room.  We just love music, it’s amazing what an influence it has on our moods, the soundtrack to our lives.
So it’s a little irritating that if an alien landed tomorrow and watched TV or read the papers they’d think we just like manufactured pop. The media reflects a very narrow band of musical tastes. When in fact the OAP down the road likes Iron Maiden, the lady round the corner loves drum & bass….why can’t our charts show this?  In this house the Guinness British Hit Singles (although now Virgin make the book) is like a bible (we do like a pub quiz), how dull if in the future all they’d see of these years was the same kind of music?   There was also an element of nostalgia behind it.  Looking forward to the Christmas chart was traditional and fun in my house.  You never really could predict it, even if it was a bit rubbish sometimes.   But now (well before last year) bookies weren’t even bothering taking bets on it anymore.

I digressed…X-factor is a great entertainment show, I do watch it amazingly enough. But it shouldn’t dominate the UK charts. No other artist has the multimillion advertising campaign on prime time tv for months on end. Kind of gives them an unfair disadvantage.
I see bands working very hard, living on nothing, travelling the country, unpacking their own gear, writing their own songs…just as deserving of attention as the singers on X-Factor. But winning X-Factor isn’t that great. You have to do as you are told, sing what you are told.  No room for your own style and thoughts. Puppets. You can see the glint in Simon’s eye when he sees a young man thinking how he can mould him into whatever the current hyped up trend is. It’s short lived. No room for long term growth.
If they cared about the winners instead of banging out a cynically chosen cover, likely to have no meaning to the singer, in time for Christmas, they’d nurture them. Give them some time. Then when they release a song, and get to number one it’ll mean something.

So we thought it was about time. A song with a message, with meaning that the artists are passionate about…plus it was funny!
We raised £163K for Shelter in the process too and the band put on a wonderful gig to thank everyone who bought their song.

There are more pictures on the blog posts about the gig.