(Simon Cowell: The man who stole Christmas?)
As January trundles into February and, if the Mayans are right, we edge ever closer to our apocalyptic demise allow me to cast your minds back to rosier pastures - mainly, last Christmas. Everyone loves Christmas; food, family, fun, frolics, festivities, fruit cake - it’s an alliterative smorgasbord of delight. For all its charms, however, Christmas hangs on a series of bizarre absurdities. It represents a form or ritualized weirdness in which we are all encouraged to conform to a series of chronologically specific traditions that at any other time of the year would send alarm bells ringing for the early signs of dementia. Wearing a crown made of paper, heating wine up in a saucepan and standing up when the Queen appears on the television are the sort of behaviors that would see you ostracized from your community throughout the rest of the calendar year. Yet at Christmas this sort of behavior is perfectly acceptable because it is Jesus Christ’s birthday and it is what he would have wanted, or at least I am fairly sure that is what the Bible tells us. If that is indeed the case, as well as his personal quirks, Jesus had at best, a very questionable taste in music; I only refrain from describing it as “embarrassingly piss-poor” to avoid some malicious form of divine retribution.
Like it (or more appropriately) loathe it, Christmas music has become entrenched in the holiday’s rich pageant. From the dour god fearing hymns of yore to the dour god fearing hymns of Cliff Richard, nothing quite encapsulates the spirit of Christmas like Christmas music. The cult of Christmas music is enshrined in the ‘Christmas Number One’: the highest grossing music single of the festive week. Throughout the rest of the year most people remain fairly indifferent to the singles chart (unless you’re Reggie Yates of course) but come Christmas it is apparently impossible not to care. Having a number one single during the week leading up to Christmas is a supreme artistic triumph, infinitely more important and prestigious than having a number one single in the second week of February or, god forbid, the third week of June. Indeed past luminaries of this most prestigious of honours include, Mr. Blobby, St Winifred’s School Choir and Rolf Harris. With such a rich artistic pedigree it is understandable why the Christmas Number One continues to attract such public interest and musical competition. In recent years the accolade has traditionally fallen upon the winner of ‘The X Factor', Simon Cowell’s immensely popular ‘talent’ competition. For most of these faceless purveyors of mediocrity it represents their sole excursion into the realms of chart success; their day in the sun in the middle of winter before returning to the lukewarm waters of the sea of disappointment. Indeed, for a period of time between 2005 and 2008 it seemed that Simon Cowell had the entire nation under some sort of hypnotic trance; he had somehow poisoned the collective cultural well forcing us all to buy his corrupt and corrosive product, somehow steeling Christmas in the process.
When in 2009, two unknown British citizens, Jon and Tracey Mortimer, started an online campaign to get Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’ to the Christmas number one spot it was heralded as a grass roots revolt; a classic David and Goliath story where a band of lowly peasants are pitted against the might of the despotic tyrant Cowell. The song choice itself was significant; the lyrical refrain of “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” was seen to attack the corporatism of the music industry, which the miserly Cowell perfectly personified. I was initially grabbed by the novelty of the campaign, ‘power to the people!’ I thought, ‘fight the power!’ – I was positively overtaken by the spirit of Chuck D. Yet its eventual success left me cold - what had we actually achieved? Had we really exercised our collective will or had we merely substituted one kind of mass-media decision inducing pressure for another? It seems that instead of buckling to the incessant marketing and advertising juggernaut of the X factor we had merely succumbed to the cumulative effect of an online campaign and its ensuing media coverage. In effect, instead of doing what Simon Cowell told us we did what two anonymous internet users told us – what a win for independent thought that was. We had invested in a media orchestrated allusion of rebellion which really represented the other side of the conformity coin (which in case you were wondering looks very similar to the former side.) So this year when a similarly anonymous internet user tried to instigate a similarly themed campaign to get Nirvana’s ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’ to the Christmas number one spot I thought, “fuck you sir, I will not do what you (or Simon Cowell) tell me!’ I will eat, drink and be merry whilst listening to Cannibal Corpse because that is the way Christ intended it! So a Merry Christmas to all and to all a ‘Hammer Smashed Face.’
(Cannibal Corpse - Hammer Smashed Face)
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