I can make you hate by Charlie Brooker

raging within it.
    But profit isn’t the point – or at least it’s not the reason I downloaded it. For one thing, I happen to think ‘Killing in the Name’ is an excellent song, so I’ve already got something out of it. Most importantly, it contains genuine emotion. Even if the climactic repeated howls of ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!’ put you in mind of a teenager loudly refusing to tidy his bedroom – as opposed to a masked anarchist hurling petrol bombs at the riot squad – there is at least an authentic human sentiment being expressed. Zack de la Rocha is audibly pissed off.
    Compare this to the pissweak vocal doodle that is Joe McElderry’s
X Factor
single. For a song whose lyrics ostensibly document an attempt to gather the spiritual strength to overcome adversity and thereby attain enlightenment, ‘The Climb’ is about as inspiring as a Lion bar. It’s a listless announcement on a service station tannoy; an advert for buttons; a fart in a clinic; a dot on a spreadsheet. Listening to it from beginning to end is like watching a bored cleaner methodically wiping a smudge from a Formica worksurface.
    But then nobody’s buying ‘The Climb’ in order to actually listen to it. They’re buying it out of sedated confusion, pushing a button they’ve been told will make them feel better. It’s the soundof the assisted suicide clinic, and it doesn’t deserve to be No. 1 this Christmas.
    This isn’t mere pop snobbery, by the way. I’d rather see Girls Aloud at No. 1 than Editors. But ‘The Climb’ is a lame cover version of a lame Miley Cyrus song. If
X Factor
can’t be arsed to do better than that, its grip on the yuletide charts deserves to be broken.
    Anyway, while I’m happy for Rage Against the Machine to be enjoying the sales and publicity, I can’t help thinking we could’ve organised a slightly better protest ourselves. Chances are the
X Factor
will try to kick back extra hard next year – perhaps by actually releasing a song with a melody in it – so it’s best to start planning the resistance now.
    The temptation might be to pour a lot of time and effort into creating a catchy anti
-X Factor
anthem, but the smartest counter-move would be to release something short, cheap and throwaway that isn’t even a proper song at all. I propose a track called ‘Simon Cowell: Shit for Ears’, which consists of a couple of eight- year-olds droning the phrase ‘Simon Cowell, shit for ears’ four times in a row in the most deliberately tuneless manner possible. It should last only about fifteen seconds or so. Quick enough to register; brief enough not to outstay its welcome.
    Then we release it online at the lowest price possible. What’s the bare minimum you can charge and still be eligible for a chart position? It could be as little as 2p. Because the track is just recorded on to a cheap mic, and released without the assistance of any record label, 100 per cent of the profits go to charity.
    Dot-eyed CGI judge and omnipresent hair product spokeswoman Cheryl Cole recently complained that the campaign against McElderry’s single was ‘mean’, adding ‘If that song – or should I say campaign – by an American group is our Christmas No. 1, I’ll be gutted for him and our charts.’
    She’s missing the point. It’s not mean: it’s funny. If the Christmas No. 1 turns out to be an angry, confrontational rock track thatconcludes with an explosion of f-words, it’ll be precisely the shot in the arm the charts have been sorely lacking the last few years: something that puts a genuine smile on the face of millions of people; sensitive people, thoughtful people; people alienated by the stifling cloud of grinning mechanical pap farted into their faces on a weekly basis by cocky, clattering, calculating talent shows like
X Factor
. It would give these people hope. Maybe only in a very small and silly way, but still: a tiny spoonful of hope. And what could be more Christmassy than