One of the many arguments offered as to why The X-Factor is a Bad Thing for pop is that Simon Cowell has taken the fun out of the race for Xmas No.1. It strikes me that this is a little rose-tinted – was anybody really that enthused with said “race” in the pre-Cowell days? Of course the Christmas market has been very important to the record industry, because so many units shift then. And in that context the idea of “the christmas no.1” was a good bit of marketing – sell a few more records by alerting people to the fact these singles was in the shops with a bit of press coverage and a 3-minute slot on Newsround. Did people enjoy this stuff? Absolutely! Did they care? That I’m less sure of. So maybe people are just sad that a bit of marketing razzle-dazzle they enjoyed has been swapped for a bit of marketing razzle-dazzle other people enjoyed. Nothing wrong with that, if so – the roots of any ‘tradition’ are likely to involve a bit of opportunism on somebody’s part.
But very possibly I’m wrong. I’d love to hear people’s experiences of these struggles for Christmas No.1. A quick straw poll of Christmas #1 races suggests two in particular have stuck in the mind. The first is 1987, when “Fairytale Of New York” didn’t quite make it. The other is 2003, when The Darkness’ kitschy “Christmas Time” was narrowly beaten by Gary Jules. Between those two, precious little – I remember the BBC trying to make a thing of it when Bob The Builder and Eminem were in contention in 2000.
But between “Fairytale” and the Darkness something else happened. “Fairytale” has joined the Christmas inescapables, but it anticipates more recent trends in Xmas chart activity: it was pushed towards #1 not just because it was Christmas but also because it was unorthodox: a slap in the face of Christmas as well as an embrace of it. That’s what makes the record so appealing – but since 1987 it’s the unorthodoxy that’s generally powered those “Christmas #1 races” which have caught the interest.
“Stan”, “Mad World”, “Killing In The Name”: not only are none of these records Christmassy, they’re all the kind of bleak or mordant or angry songs that represent a sort of anti-festive option. Records like these don’t normally do well at Christmas, except there’s now a mini-tradition of them doing precisely that, and “Mad World” took the anti-option all the way to the top. The song it beat, “Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)”, was an arch attempt to make and mimic an old school Christmas record. So by 2003 (and probably before) the whole idea of “Christmas No.1” had become a playground – a caricature of “Christmas music” against a self-conscious opposition to it. Is this the ‘tradition’ Simon Cowell is meant to be overturning?
Seems to me the idea of the “chart battle” is a fairly recent one, born out of a particular pop era. The excitement of the charts used to be less gladiatorial – you would hope your favourites would climb to the top, and maybe curse the rubbish that kept them off it, but nobody really talks about a “battle” between Engelbert and the Beatles, or Joe Dolce and Ultravox.
No, the battle is a creature of first-week-sales and known release dates: two records going “head to head” in the knowledge that the one which doesn’t make it won’t get a second crack at the top. Blur vs Oasis is the classic example: Sophie Ellis-Bextor vs Victoria Beckham another. If you can get a storyline in there, so much the better (for your sales too).
It’s interesting to me that some people are seeing RATM v X-Factor as an enjoyable callback to those battles, because they’re an example of “chart culture” that for once doesn’t date from the golden age of the 70s and 80s. Instead it comes from the supposedly devalued Top 40s of the 90s and 00s. And in a tiny way this is important: after all, the story of the charts isn’t just the story of what’s popular: it’s the story of what being popular means, and the narrative that’s recently come to define that meaning is the one laid down by my generation, who grew up with records that gently rose and fell. But the rhetoric around the RATM one seems a bit younger, more in tune with a chart defined by head-to-head fights and big quick events.
Nostalgia for the Christmas No.1 is partly a nostalgia for all of this chart culture, old and less old – the Xmas Top Of The Pops is the only one that’s left, after all. The meaning of popularity is changing again, and the ways it’s expressed and recognised will change along with it. One irony of the X-Factor fight is that it’s surely keeping the Christmas single sales boost alive: physical copies now account for a minute fraction of single sales, and as far as I know few are giving MP3s for Xmas. When the present market goes, the resonance of “Christmas Number One” goes with it. We’ll have to find new places to do battle in.
Frankie vs Wham!, resolved by the Xmas truce of Band Aid, was an 80s new pop battle, surely? Certainly the whole rhetoric of ZTT was about going into battle for the charts.
the grandaddy of the refusenik deconstruction of obligatory wobs cheer is of course that chief among dysphorians mr GREG LAKE
the battle is allegorically depicted here
xx yr pal sukrat ON BEHALF OF the machine
1988’s Cliff Vs Kylie & Jason battle felt like a clash between two ways of doing business (EMI pitted against lone Thatcherite entrepreneur) and two generations of pop. Neither disc was looked upon with anything but derision by my peers, but both are actually rather splendid, I think. But more of this anon…
I was rooting for the Farm’s Altogether Now back in 1990 over Cliff, Vanilla Ice, etc, hoping it would provide a suitably baggy end to the year of the Mondays and Roses.
I was sort of hoping it would be Madonna’s ‘Justify My Love’ that year – the more inappropriate the better (only good thing about the RATM choice I guess).
Jeepster vs Ernie in ’71? Marc B was very big on Christmas – see his ace xmas flexi message, free with Jackie iirc – and must have felt pretty miffed. My great grandmother helped Benny Hill’s cause by buying Ernie for me, the first record I ever owned apart from a Pinky & Perky EP and hand-me-down 78s. I was unaware of any chart battle, being six-years old at the time.
Neither were what you’d call Christmas rhymes either. The raciest Xmas chart race?
I’ve always thought of the Xmas No 1 being the one week in the year where I really DIDN’T care about No 1 – nearly all the contenders for it are dreadful every year. Including this one.
This will probably be known to all the internet in a matter of hours, but why not help it along, things don’t go viral of themselves you know, some genius somewhere has constructed
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE —-anag—-> GATECRASH INANE MEGAHIT
re 6 That should be CHRISTIAN rhymes of course…
I wish it was Bob Dylan’s Must Be Santa that was the opposition to Joe McThing, then i’d happily buy a few ‘copies’
Paddy Power has apparently shortened the odds on The Muppets’ Bo Rhap!?!?
What was Nizlopi up against? How soon we forget…
Westlife, but then Nizlopi were then beaten in turn by Shayne Ward (‘That’s My Goal’) – three unappetising singles. Of course, there’s always the doctrinal argument that the Christmas number one is what people are buying in Christmas week, not what’s number one on Christmas day… But most people are probably too impatient to appreciate that distinction.
Nothing much I can add to this other than ‘well said’.
Tom, you’re one of the best – if not THE best – music writers in Britain today. Thank you :-)
Tom, what exactly is that physical percentage now ? You’re right that it is a more recent phenomenon borne out of a media and business studies generation that always needs to flag up marketing strategies. The first time I remember any hype around it was 1989 when there was a lot of betting on an absolutely terrible record by Lionel Bart called “Happy Endings” (featured in a building society advert) which thankfully barely made the Top 75.
Another interesting failure came ten years earlier when Squeeze’s “Christmas Day” didn’t chart just months after successive no 2’s with “Cool For Cats” and “Up The Junction”. It has to be said it wasn’t a great record with some very uncomfortable shifts in tempo but you would have expected it to break cover at least. Someone on youtube suggested it had been banned-does anyone remember that for sure ?
The Gary Jules record was interesting because it had been on the soundtrack album and played on the radio for months- was there a conscious decision to release it at Christmas time ? I also think it was helped to the top by the heavy media coverage of the Soham trial putting everyone in a sombre mood just before Christmas.
I think you’re wrong about the antiquity of the term “chart battle” – I’m sure that phrase or something very similar* was used on the many occasions in the 50s and 60s when different versions, usually US v UK, of the same song would race each other up the chart. In those days, of course, sales and chart placings displayed more conventional curves over a period, as opposed to the all-or-nothing, one week battle it later became when sales habitually peaked in the first week. Sometimes both versions would take turns at number one (Guy Mitchell and Tommy Steele), usually one or other would have a clear win, but often you’d get both versions in the top ten at once.
*Certainly Jimmy Savile would use it on the Old Record Club many years later!
I have now heard about the Gary Jules – Soham Trial theory twice in a week – I certainly didn’t link the two at the time I must admit. I am a little bit sceptical: after all when the search and murder were dominating headlines the year before, the nation responded by sending Darius to the top.
And great point on the 50s Erithian. I think what I’m getting at more is that the idea of what a “chart battle” is has changed over the years:
– two competing versions of the same song
– a general sense of rivalry over time
– head-to-head win or lose within a specific week’s chart
The Xmas No.1 has always had the possibility of being the third kind of “battle”, but it wasn’t until the 90s that head-to-head races could extend to the rest of the year.
I have to say I thought the RATM internet campaign was a pissy bit of teenage alterno-petulance akin to the bottling of Daphne and Celeste* UNTIL I read how much it had pissed off Simon Cowell. Now I’m almost tempted to buy a copy.
(*except that seemed more like a big in-joke between D&C and ver kidz, taken seriously by pissy-pants NME hacks)
Chewing gum is disgusting and gives you stomach ulcers, but kids all chew it because it’s against school rules. Cowell is the bossy, fuddy music teacher telling us not to do it like that because it’s not the proper way and KitNO for Xmas #1 will be a nice big spunking cock drawn on his blackboard.
I think what a lot of people hate about the X factor and it’s ilk is that it’s stuck the ugly machinations of the music industry to the fore – once men like Cowell would have been content to lurk in the shadows counting their billions while sticking someone pretty and/or talented up front. Now Cowell and his ilk are rockstars in their own right. And why? Because they’re powerful. Powerful in the most unglamorous, pragmatic, businesslike way. And there seems something a bit depressing about that.
Stacy should have won.
I read this online yesterday re RATM v Joe: “The last big Christmas battle anywhere near this scale was Spice Girls ‘Goodbye’ vs Chef’s ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ in 1998, when Spice Girls won out with 380,000 sales vs 375,000.”
(Not sure what the source is, sorry. Not sure if I could describe the demographic of the sides in that particular battle either! Anyway, I was a neutral.)
The idea to prevent another apparently “inevitable” X-factor xmas #1 and piss off Simon Cowell is entirely reasonable. Attempting to do it with a track that, on the surface at least, appears the exact opposite of what Cowell provides- noisy, political and passionate as opposed to polished, polite and personality-free- makes a kind of sense too. The thing that depresses me about it all is that the chosen track is 17 years old- as if there was nothing that fitted the bill made in the last decade, never mind the last few months. If RATM get to the top this weekend i’ll personally see it less as the victory of “real music” over “manufactured music” that the campaigns supporters seem to view it as and more as and an acknowledgement of the (supposedly)poor state of the current music scene artistically- a admission of defeat that things were better in the “old days”, the equivelant of “Last Christmas” being reeled out in ’99 to prevent “Millenium Prayer” reaching the top.
When pop musicians and the pop music buying public are told this so much that they start to believe it it can have a postive result such as the “no Elvis, No Beatles, No Stones” Year Zero approach of punk but it can also cause a feeling of mailaise, a sense of “why bother?”-definitely not an attitude that prompts great music being made.I remember a similar mood being prevalant in the mid80s being covered in Popular right now and sullies the entire period in my memories.
I like Crag’s post a lot, except that where X-Factor and Idol excel is in personality – even if it’s the winner’s stage personality more than the winner’s track’s musical personality that’s driving the purchases. The phrase “piss off Simon Cowell” is telling, since the man is neither polite nor personality-free by a long shot. But – though I’m not in a position to know – Crag seems on the money in regard to the malaise that underlies the RATM campaign.
“Cowell is the bossy, fuddy music teacher telling us not to do it like that because it’s not the proper way and KitNO for Xmas #1 will be a nice big spunking cock drawn on his blackboard.”
Tommy – that is why I love this site! Your words will be quoted for years to come (by me anyway) – bravo!
Yes Cowell has handled all this REALLY badly. I think it’s rattled him, not because he’s not used to people disliking him, but because it’s intensely irritating for him not to be able to use that dislike.
Tommy – what Erithian said.
Crag – fair point, there has to be summat from the world of ROCK! that’s worthy from this decade. Personally, I would suggest “Party Hard” by Andrew W.K. (my single/track of the noughties) but then again, I am a bit strange!
Jeff W – from what I can recall, “Chocolate Salty Balls” got to number one the week after, which meant everyone won. Erm, possibly.
Andrew WK would make a really good version of The Climb :(
Besides Blur/Oasis and Spiller/Posh, there was also the chart battle which saw Westlife (another Cowell signing) lose out to Bob the Builder for that year’s Christmas No1. Cowell’s way of doing things hasn’t changed, his group’s release being timed to enter the Christmas chart at the top, as most singles did in the immediate pre-downloading era, and in the same arrogant expectation that it would have a clear run. As far as I can remember, Bob’s single was already in the chart, and actually climbed to the top, holding off Westlife in the process. Just as some of those downloading RATM will be doing so to spite Cowell, so I’m sure people who bought Bob (for their little niece, natch) did so to stop the Westlife procession.
#18: Cowell’s rise from record company suit to media star seems to be part of the wider trend of the lionisation of businessmen and the worship of money-making. Ten years ago, could anybody have named the head of Topshop? Nowadays he gets to squire Kate Moss around the gossip columns. They get TV series which fan their egos by showing them as all-powerful, bold and swashbuckling, yet at the same time prudent and with their eyes on the bottom line. They also get TV series designed to show what caring, sharing generous guys they are. As though any of that stops them from being utterly charmless bores. Why can’t they just piss off and count their money?
Tom @ 25 – Oh. God. Yes.
That’s a big spunking cock on Mr Cowell’s whiteboard, drawn in permanent marker.
re 25 & 27 – fear not – Andrew WK does contribute to this festive remake:
http://pitchfork.com/news/37335-fucked-ups-all-star-charity-benefit-single-available-now/
Ok, so is KITNO the ‘heaviest’ UK #1 ever? Iron Maiden had a #1 in the early ’90s, but I don’t know the song. Hendrix? Any other contenders? Prodigy? If we gave the bunny a few days off, could any heaviosity experts opine? Oh, and happy holidays everyone!