Silence is golden
Here we go again.
It’s the annual attempt to embarrass pop-music mogul Simon Cowell by getting another song – anything except the X Factor winner – to Christmas Number 1 in the UK charts.
Last year husband and wife team Jon and Tracy Morter managed to pull off a coup by rousing a million Facebooker’s and propelling the Rage Against The Machine anarchic classic Killing In The Name Of to the Christmas top spot, beating X Factor winner Joe McElderry into second place by more than 50,000 (mainly electronic) units.
The audacious victory for non-X factor fans came after a failed attempt (by a different group) to beat Alexandra Burke, the 2008 winner to Christmas Number One by mass purchasing of the Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah, the same song that Burke covered. On that occasion, the funsters could only manage number two.
This year there have already been many songs suggested for the annual anti-Cowell onslaught, but with Jon and Tracy Morter deciding not to attempt a repeat performance of last year’s success, it’s taken a while for a clear favourite to rise from the myriad ideas … but now it looks like we have some momentum … and the winner is … silence.
Yep, that’s right, John Cage’s 1952 experimental 4′ 33 is quickly emerging as the popular choice to take on Cowell and has already attracted almost 35,000 members in its official Facebook group.
The twist is that the song consists of four minutes thirty three seconds of silence, something that many of the members of the group believe will be preferable to having to listen to a similar amount of singing from the X Factor winner … ha ha very good.
The campaign has a long way to go if it is to match the size and scale of the Morter’s ‘Rage’ effort last year, but Christmas is still several months ago, so a good dose of publicity and a little luck could be enough to push the ‘Cage Against The Machine’ campaign over the edge.
Whether they’ll manage to do it or not remains to be seen … but for now it appears, they have the big mo and silence is golden once again.
If you haven’t heard Cage’s 4’33, here’s a video to remind you of what this year’s yule tide hit could be:
I admit, this is both genius and funny, but I still think surfin’ bird by the trashmen should be number 1!
What a load of rubbish. 4’33 may be a work of theatre, but it isn’t music.