Ok, it’s a debate thats been, for want of a less pun-filled word, raging over the past couple of weeks. So, time to have a wade into the argument with a couple of verbal butterfly strokes.
Here are things as I see them. When you look at things at face value, Simon Cowell may be a complete twat (and he is) but he is perhaps the most honest of the complete twats that inhabit that thing that calls itself a primetime TV show (X-Factor). He is in the business to make money. That’s the way it’s always been for him, and thats the way it always will be. I applaud that kind of honesty.
What annoys me is the farcical sideshow that has built up around an audition process. I’ll bet anything that auditions for feature films have suffered because potential candidates are scared to death to apply in case they get laughed off stage by complete pillocks like Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole and that Aussie bint with the famous sister.
It is well documented that X-Factor is owned/run/pedalled/pushed by Simon Cowell and his seemingly limitless fortune, which brings me to the race to have the Christmas Number One in the charts. Seriously, who gives a damn anymore? The last time I even noticed who was top of the charts was the time I walked all the 15 miles home from school – probably should have stayed, considering the quality of Daytime TV. Simon Cowell will be pushing the X-Factor winner’s single, whatever and whoever the hell it is, to try to be the Christmas number one (i.e. the number one on the last Sunday before Christmas Day). This is calculated by album sales. Now, in the modern world where LEGAL downloading is still very much alive, I’d say that figures of sales are fairly inaccurate when calculating how good a song is, so this more or less makes the ‘charts’ redundant. Like they weren’t anyway.
Which brings us to ‘Killing in the Name’ by Rage Against the Machine. In itself, a catchy if not slightly annoying song in terms of repetitiveness. Now its quite obvious that the reason this song is being pushed by certain sections of the general public (i.e. anyone who can’t stand X-Factor and wants to show it) is not because of the song, but because of the name of the band. The song is almost meaningless, aside from it being the most memorable song RATM ever did. So why them? Because they symbolised the exact same thing back then as the re-use of their song now. A country (or a section of it, in this case Primetime TV) under the thumb of a more influential power flexing its muscle a bit too far. Back then it was Republican policies under Bush Sr. Now, in this particular circumstance, its a music ‘mogul’ having his way with the popular airwaves so music he’s funded gets played before anything good and worth listening to. Simon Cowell has been doing this stuff for years and finally people seem to be waking up to it. The problem was (and still is) that the general public will happily sit down and watch anything in front of them as long as it takes their minds off of daily life, which unless you have a creative profession I’d venture to say is pretty dull. They just have nothing better to do.
I am not a massive fan of RATM, but its got to be a better notion than turning the radio off because some bastard with a barrel full of Simon Cowell’s cash is singing a cover of a cover of a cover of a song that was original back in the 1960’s. Either put on the original, put on Killing in the Name, or shoot Cowell and ask questions later.
Right, I am ranted out. Time to go get a cup of coffee before a certain someone and I be off to see if Avatar is as good as Mr Sale deems it to be. Damn well better be, I don’t get into the cinema for free you know – I have to get out of bed to go there.
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I certainly need as much feedback on that one as I can get. It’s sitting at first draft and cracking on is definitely necessary.