Having not heard either of the candidate songs currently tipped for the Xmas No.1 this year, I am ideally placed to comment impartially on the unedifying scramble between X Factor winner Simon Cowell and Rage Against the Machine.
“There is a lot of smugness in the certainty that they own the No 1 spot. We want to wipe that smug grin off their faces." says Tom Morello, of RATM, sounding more like a pro boxer than a musician.
So in the blue corner we have one over-hyped, TV promoted single from X factor's Joe McElderry and in the red corner another, over-hyped, Facebook promoted single from RATM.
The facebook crowd seem to think that by taking on the Cowell machine they are somehow striking a blow for "real" music over the "bland mediocrity" (Morello's phrase) of X-factor fodder. But who is defining their music as "real"? A bunch of self-appointed members of the general public who spend time on facebook and who happen to dislike the tastes of another section of the general public who prefer to watch telly with their families. They are using the RATM single as a symbolic rallying flag to make their point.
Whoever first said the often-repeated saying "There are only two types of music, good and bad" was both arrogant (in presuming to know the difference) and wrong. There are three "types" of music - music you like, music you don't like and music you haven't heard yet. And "liking" is a subjective judgement made by each listener, influenced by mood, timing, familiarity, purpose. It is also likely to change over time as people themselves change. Any attempt to apply an objective "quality" test is doomed to failure.
The race for Christmas no. 1 is just an amusing sideshow - a measure of how various media methods can effectively combine to rally groups of people into buying singles to score points, with making money as a side-effect. It has little to do with music at all.
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