Sons of Loki

I was looking forward to writing about the newly-spiced up battle for Christmas no. 1 when a few days ago this woman basically said it all for me much better:

We live our lives amongst popular culture. The Christmas number 1, for the past decade, has nearly always been a novelty record, but the group isn’t protesting at that. What they’re angry about is that nearly everything is now a novelty record, that the charts are now full of talentless jingle singers with sob stories instead of genuinely exciting musicians, and that thanks to all that, children now assume that becoming famous needs no discernible talent or effort.

Now I wasn’t too bothered when the idea of “Killing in the Name” came up as a rock-the-vote candidate for Christmas number one, because there were a few songs floating around and none of them seemed to have any chance of defeating Cowell’s dreary inevitability. But then … something very magical happened. Imagine that, a miracle at Christmas! The Facebook group grew, and grew to the point where it might actually happen. A proper grassroots campaign might achieve it.

Everyone got it wrong, of course. It wasn’t to spite Joe Whatshisface – the truth is I didn’t even know his name until last week, and I have no idea what his song is like, and I’m sure he’s a lovely lad, but he is a celebrity now, and has become a pop singer through a shamelessly commercialised route, and must come to terms with the fact that the public may not like him. It’s not really about Cowell, who is actually a guilty pleasure to watch at times (but mostly a dick). It’s not juvenile rebellion, even if there is an irony in a band of people coming together to say “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” and then sheepishly all buying the same record because one guy told them to. (As Rebecca Winson notes, “Lying down and letting a Miley Cyrus cover, for crying out loud, with all of its connotations – take us into the next decade… well, now that’s sheepish behaviour.”)

It’s about all the people in Britain who are fed up of being pandered to by crappy reality shows and mindless tabloids (who predictably lashed out at the campaign, suggesting that they lived in some bizarre fantasy world where Simon Cowell owned Sony and got a direct cut of RATM’s royalties, which is patently untrue). All the people who didn’t want another bloody cover from another bloody here-today-gone-tomorrow artist with the right voice and the right looks to appeal to a very particular market did indeed cry out, “fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.” This can only be a good thing, right?

And it’s more than that. You know where I spent my formative years? By the radio, listening to the Sunday chart show with my sister. Every week, like an unrepentant gambler, I would have my own choice for number one, something made with real talent and sweat. Every week I would hope against all odds for Marion or Kenickie or The Bluetones to get to the top spot, and every week it would be the same commercialised, soulless pap. You know what that does to a small child? Disillusionment. I was taught from a very young age that real talent and hard work will get you nowhere thanks to Simon and his cronies.
As I wrote this last night, the results were yet to be in.

I wake up today to see that Rage won.

Good times. It is only a small thing, but I hear my childhood self cheering.