Raging Christmas In UK

By Ben Liew  •  in News
Thirsty for JUICE content? Quench your cravings on our Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp

It’s been a raging Christmas in the UK this year… well, on the music charts at least. Hardcore rap band Rage Against The Machine went to #1 on the UK Christmas Singles Chart with their 1992 anti-KKK hit ‘Killing In The Name’. Thanks to a fierce grassroots Facebook campaign, the band which disbanded in 2000 beat Simon Cowell’s choiced pop star Joe McElderry. So our question is: who took Satan out for scones and crumpets?

Seeing as Simon Cowell’s X Factor franchise and its manufactured stars have dominated the UK Christmas Chart for the past 4 years, a husband and wife team simply decided that they had enough of it and started a Facebook page titled Rage Against The Machine For Christmas #1.

With over a million members, sales of the song reached around 500,000 copies and soon every muthafooka on the block was screaming “Fark you! I won’t do what you tell me!”

Hardly a Christmas-sy song, ‘Killing In The Name’ has 16 repeated F-words in a row. But wait! The controversy get deeper as ‘Killing…’ is a Sony BMG catalogue track – just like ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ and all those other tunes which mysteriously crop up on The X Factor time and again. In case you’re unaware of the corporate link, Sony BMG have exclusive rights to Simon Cowell’s artists. His own label Syco is owned by Sony.

So is this a history lesson in people-power realised by modern technology or an engineered sales gimmick by Sony? One thing’s for sure, Shelter has received £91,000 due to the campaign which also encourages people to donate to the charity. And RATM themselves are planning a free concert in Britain as promised by the band if they won.

Happy holidays, muthafooka!