"Rock band Rage Against the Machine ended Simon Cowell’s four year domination of the Christmas charts tonight after a hugely popular Facebook campaign helped the Los Angeles nu-metallers snatch the Christmas number one slot from X-factor’s Joe McEdlerry.More than half a million people downloaded the band’s famously anti-authoritarian and expletive laden track “Killing in the Name” in what was seen as a broad protest against the increasing influence of manufactured pop music.
It is the first time a non-X-Factor song has made it to Christmas number one for four years and represents a major snub to the show’s creator Cowell who angrily described the campaign to him another number one slot as “very Scrooge”. - SourceFor the readers not living in the UK, this is huge as the Xmas number one slot is taken very seriously and if you manage to take number one, your pop-musical career usually fares very well the year after...It's amazing to see a grassroots campaign on Facebook with a zero marketing budget able to topple the big TV networks and all their meticulous planning and PR....