THE INDEPENDENT: 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.” X-Factor winner McElderry was less than a year old when Rage Against the Machine stormed onto the LA rock scene in 1992 with their self-titled debut album which went triple platinum and effectively gave birth to the nu-metal rock scene by blending heavy metal guitar riffs with politically charged rap lyrics. Earlier in the week he listened to “Killing in the Name” for the first time and described it as “dreadful”. But last night the 18-year-old Geordie singer, whose cover of Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb” sold 50,000 fewer copies than his rivals, was noticeably more magnanimous in defeat. “Fair play to the guys who have organised the Facebook campaign — it’s been exciting to be part of a much-hyped battle and they definitely deserve congratulations,” he said. “This time last year I never thought for one minute that I’d win The X Factor, never mind about having a debut single out, so I’m just delighted to be in the charts.” Speaking on BBC Radio 1’s Chart Show, Rage frontman Zach de la Rocha said his band getting to number one said “more about the spontaneous action taken by young people throughout the UK to topple this very sterile pop monopoly and less about the song and the band. We are very proud to have had the song chosen as the vehicle by which to do this.” MORE

PREVIOUSLY: The Battle To Make RATM’s “Killing In The Name” The Number One Christmas Song In Great Britain

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BBC: Rock band Rage Against The Machine is ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry in the race for the Christmas number one, early sales figures suggest. A Facebook group aiming to get the band’s 1992 hit Killing In The Name to the top of the festive chart has attracted more than 750,000 members. But McElderry’s debut The Climb, out on CD on Wednesday, is expected to catch up by the weekend. The Official Charts Company (OCC) said it is “a very exciting battle”. It is understood that there is a 10% margin in sales between the two singles after Sunday and Monday. McElderry’s song was released digital after his victory in the X Factor final, while Rage Against The Machine has been out almost twice as long. X Factor judge Simon Cowell has criticised the internet campaign, calling it “stupid”. MORE

RELATED: Eight years and three or four girlfriends ago, Rage Against the Machine was on the FOP shitlist for staging a Free Mumia concert at the Meadowlands. Mumia, as you may have heard, was convicted of killing officer Daniel Faulkner. None of that hubub was much on my radar back then. But my gal at the time, well, she was pretty hardcore Irish, Up The Ra! and all that. Her aunt was a tough-but-sweet old broad that was up to her elbows in The Troubles, if you know what I mean. Let’s just say that some of the proceeds from those beef n’ brews she threw might have wound up putting butter and guns on the table in Belfast. Suffice it to say that Faulkner was an Irish martyr in the eyes of her family.

One day she came by my place and told me she was breaking up with me because I had Rage Against The Machine’s Evil Empire CD in my apartment. Still in the wrapper mind you.

“I didn’t buy it, it got sent to me,” I protested. She had a great ass.
“Why don’t you get rid of it then?”
“I might have to write about it some day.”
“It came out four years ago. If you loved me you would get rid of it.”

She was kidding, but only by half. Truth be told she never really looked at me the same after that. Long story short, she left and Rage stayed. All these girlfriends later, I didn’t get around to listening to it until I saw The Party’s Over. Directed by Donovan Leitch and hosted by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, The Party’s Over, isn’t very good, in fact it’s a rather anemic dollar-short-day-late stab at x-raying the blackened heart of American democracy. But there are two must-see moments that justify the rental fee. The first is a lot of never-seen footage of rioters clashing with cops in the streets of Philadelphia during the 2000 Republican convention. (Watch it again, and after everything that came after, tell me you don’t see it all differently.) From here the film cuts to the LA cops igniting a bloody riot when they shutdown an incendiary street performance by Rage Against the Machine outside the Democratic National Convention a few weeks later. Rage had thousands in the streets. That was the last time an American rock band scared the shit out of the powers that be.

I put on Evil Empire and the shoe still fits, it stomps out of the speakers like a Hendrixian bull in the Columbine china shop of Clinton’s America. When Evil Empire came out in 1996, it just sounded like shrill sloganeering to me. After all, our guy was in the White House, he may have a little of the devil in him, but it’s the devil we know. Sure there’s injustices great and small, but we have peace, prosperity, Stereolab and the Internet stocks are gonna make us all independently wealthy. All of us. That was, as Karl Rove likes to say, a pre-9/11 mentality. Listening to Evil Empire now, it sounds to me like rumbling war drums foretelling the great clash of civilizations. I feel the rage. I hate rap-rock as much as you, but really, it’s come to this: the sky is really falling. Mister we could use a band like Rage Against The Machine again. A band that scares the shit out of the powers that be, a band that pounds lies into dust with their bare hands. A fist that slams on the table and rattles the chess pieces. A band that brings the huddled masses into the streets, a band that must be stopped. And no, I’m not just talking about Audioslave. –JONATHAN VALANIA

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At the Democratic National Convention on August 14, 2000 in Los Angeles Rage Against the Machine played in this free concert to protest the DNC going on across the street at the Staples Center. The cops didn’t much care for the music, it seems.