The UK chart Xmas number 1 has never meant a great deal to me. When I was a child I kinda watched it because I was incapable of any grand sense of analytical thought. But as soon as I started my adventure to find my music I gave up on the charts all together. Until this year….

We all know the story by now so I can’t be bothered to rehash it too much. The talent show X Factor has had the Xmas Chart all sewn up for 4 years now. It’s quite a boring state of affairs but I can have no great objection to it as as I said I haven’t taken any great interest in the music charts in general for some time now. There are people who do take an interest and were fed up with the status quo of X Factors uniform domination and started a campaign to get a different song to number 1 this year. The song was Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine (a personal fave, I’ve done the Macarena to it) and by gum they did it!

People have reacted to this in different ways as the obviously would. Some have loved it, some have hated it, some have placed unrealistic meaning upon it and others have pointed this out in typically lofty fashion. I’ve tried to take a broad view of it as I find myself easily lead by bandwagons.

The first point for me is this whole thing has been gloriously daft. If you subtract any weight of meaning, far reaching consequence and social commentary. Killing in the Name as Xmas #1 is a funny concept to me. The best quote I’ve seen on the subject was on twitter (obviously) where @mattleys (a guy who is certainly worth a follow) said:

” It’s a wonderful piece of Great British Mischief.”

The Xmas #1 has meant nothing for years and even when it meant something it still meant nothing. So to have a song that is so far from removed from Xmas as Xmas #1 is a funny concept. Simple, but funny.

That said, after the initial laugh about the farcical nature of this situation you have to address the song choice. I’ve thought about it quite a lot and the KITN is the one of the few songs that could work, it inspires so much in so many.  There were people like me who wanted it to happen for the laughs and others who attributed all kinds of grand ideas of fucking Simon Cowell which were clearly naive and misguided. The original nature of the song was intended to inspire such rebellion in people and said people have been seemingly conscripted into a campaign they have imbued with meaning that isn’t there. The aim of this campaign was always to have fun and shake it up a bit and by christ it worked.

It’s a shame because in an ideal world a song with a bit more Xmas cheer or even just heartwarming intent would be the vehicle for this marvel. However, Jon & Tracy could never have known this would happen. Tracy said to Sky News that they had to fight fire with fire and if you think about it, it wouldn’t have worked without something like KITN.

If I had my way and a time machine I would have suggested this

It was announced as an Xmas single about a week after #ratm4xmas took off and it would have been perfect. Happy, joyous and different. But them’s the breaks.

This leads me to the grandest point of all. Something that hit me recently and has highlighted that love or hate it, this whole glorious barn dance has been an unbridled success. People have said that no one cared before so why should they care now? That’s kinda the point, this whole thing has made people interested in something they weren’t interested in before. People have got involved and done stuff, it’s a good thing! In a nut shell:

It has shown what can be done if you inspire people

Jon & Tracy god bless em have raised over £60,000 for Shelter because of this. People have said that Shelter would be there without this etc, blah blah blah. This doesn’t matter, none of it does. Not the charts, not the X Factor, not RATM, nothing. Nothing in the face of the bold truth that when you do something that encourages people to act then things can happen.

None of what has happened is of any great consequence. But it has made people excited, interested, furious, snooty about something that before now they had completely taken for granted. What happens next year? Everyone will be trying to compete with the X Factor single and that’s the way it should be. But not just the Xmas #1. Not even music. None of it matters beyond the fact if you give people something to get interested in, something they feel they have a stake in that they wanna see either happen or not happen, they’ll turn up. Can you imagine if we all took a general election this seriously?

It’s an exciting prospect and something that should be taken advantage of for the greater good. It’s all well and good being cynical about it, but this whole thing raised money for homeless people this Xmas. Maybe it’s a small gesture but for fucks sake it’s better than nothing. You can captivate peoples imaginations and steer it towards good causes, it’s a simple idea but a great one in my opinion and that’s why this whole thing has impressed me so much.

I refuse to be cynical about this as I feel it’s these things, with genuine passionate interest, that can make changes for the better. We should all applaud Jon & Tracy as they’ve made something brilliantly stupid happen and some poor homeless bastards will have somewhere warm to stay on Xmas day because of it. If you can’t see the benefit of that then that’s a damn shame.

Fuck you, I did what they told me. Sony got paid and I don’t care. I had a bloody good laugh, I saw what people are capable of no matter how naive or misguided, their hearts were in the right place. Now if we can use this for grander efforts, then we’re cooking on gas.

If you wanna give to Shelter this Xmas, you can do at here -> http://www.justgiving.com/ratm4xmas