Aren't all Christmas number ones the product of some sort of campaign anyway?
Either through a huge advertising/playlist push paid for by a major record label or whether it is just a decent Christmas single that connects to most people, so much so, they go and buy it.
After some long and hard research looking on Wikipedia and one more site, it looks that 1984 was the first big battle for the Christmas number one position by two songs that were actually about the festive season. That year Band Aid and all of it's charity goodness beat Wham! to number one.
The one i can personally remember as a child was when the nation got behind Cliff Richard's 'Mistletoe And Wine' to give it a huge push to knock Kylie & Jason just in time. After all we can't have Antipodean summer vibes winning over our annual sleety season.
In 1993 after 'true music fans' got bored of Take That reaching number one with EVERY release that year, decided to keep them off the Christmas top-spot by rallying together in the spirit of punk and buying Mr Blobby.
A few years after that Spice Girls got their first Christmas number one with 2 Become 1. They did it again the following year narrowly beating the true music lover's track of choice - Teletubbies 'Say Eh-Oh!'.
The year after that they again won, much to the chagrin of the record buying rebel's who paid hand-over-fist for Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls.
It was then in 2005 that the evil, dark-overlord of bubblegum pop began his reign at the top for many, many years, the rebel forces tried to destroy the trouser-nippled one by enrolling a couple of Jazz farm-hands into their alliance with the underdog entry 'JCB Song'. But it wasn't meant to be. The empire's hold was strong, even The Old Republic warriors Take That couldn't overcome the despot's reign the year after.
What followed then was an odd tactical approach of using dead singers. It failed. Twice. However what appeared to be the spirit of 'good music being better than manufactured pop music' was there as the Jeff Buckley original made it number two. Next time Cowell, next time.
Which brings us up to this year.
This year particularly has seen a huge surge in the success of Social Media, ever since Stephen Fry mentioned Twitter on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, randoms and spammers have a new way to vaguely 'follow' what you're doing and try to get you to watch Britney Spears do blowjobs.
Facebook: You now know when that person you can barely remember from school goes Christmas shopping (October, yes she's the self-proclaimed "mad one", "if she was in Friends, she'd be Phoebe, cos she's just mad."), and they now know that you "really enjoyed that pie last night".
It's also a way for you to get involved in groups and campaigns like the "If i get loads of people in this group i'll name my kid Spider-Man" or "I'm don't care about anything but i'll physically push this button and join this group"or even "Get Rage Against The Machine to number one for xmas" So these two social media platforms have allowed campaigns to form and for people to feel like they have a voice. They can shout out with a Rebel Yell against the other forms of mass media. Most prominently this year we've seen things like 'twynch mobs' forming around Jan Moir's homophobic rant about what she thought Stephen Gately's life consisted of, and the Trafigura cover up, and the Iranian Election, and the...
I digress. Basically my point is that the Christmas Number One spot has for the most part, been the result of campaigns; a mass audience have won some years and another mass audience have won other years.
So who has benefitted from all this brouhaha?
It could be that monetarily speaking the real winner is Sony and therefore Simon Cowell. Both tracks are after all signed to the same label.
Or, maybe it's charity who are the winners, Shelter are after all receiving the profits from the sales of Rage's single (which you can still give to without buying the song).
Or, it could be that music and the pop charts are the real winners. EVERYONE has a reignited interest in them again... For a week.
I remember following the pop charts when i was a child and illegally taping the songs i liked from them. I remember 'home taping is killing music, and i remember wondering why there was a record button if we weren't allowed to use it. I also remember going out and buying tunes that i couldn't get because my sellotaped radio-controlled car aerials that i attached to the radio couldn't get a decent enough signal from pirate radio stations.
This year people such as Simon Cowell have melodramatically cried that it's the death of the Music Industry due to the big, bad Internet and EVERYONE illegally downloading. They've gone and got their dad, who's bigger than yours, to push for a bill in Parliament aimed at cutting off entire households from the entire Internet. It's ironic that the same EVERYONE became part of a campaign to buy and legally download enough of a particular track to overturn a mogul-esque character with his own tried and tested campaign for Christmas Number One.
Or, maybe people just like a bit of a change?
Have yourselves a sweary little Christmas and sip a quaint sherry to Mr. Oizo's 'distortion turned up to bastard' remix:
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