Well, now.  If you’re British, you already know where this is heading.  But for everyone else, let’s set the scene.

It must have seemed so simple.  The X Factor would crown its 2009 winner on Sunday 13 December, release the single the next day (invariably a rousing ballad about how hard the winner had worked and what an incredible journey they had been on, and a hastily assembled clip-show video), and then soar to the top of the charts to be number 1 on Christmas day.  It worked in 2005 with Shayne Ward.  It worked in 2006 with Leona Lewis.  It worked in 2007 with Leon Jackson.  And it worked in 2008 with Alexandra Burke.  Ratings were huge.  No other record company was trying to compete.  Bookmakers weren’t even wasting their time offering odds on the Christmas number 1, because it was such a foregone conclusion.  They were only taking bets on who’d come second.

What could possibly go wrong?

Yes, really.  “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine reached number 25 on its original release in 1992, and was, to put it mildly, not an obvious contender for the 2009 Christmas number 1.  Its unexpected appearance at the top of the charts is entirely due to a Facebook campaign expressly intended to stop Simon Cowell from getting his fifth consecutive Christmas Number One.  This has been tried before.  A groundswell of support last year saw Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah” reach number two in competition to the Alexandra Burke cover, but it was never close to winning.  Rage Against the Machine managed it with a 10% margin, selling half a million copies in a week.

So, nobody really expected this to happen.  When the midweek sales came out on Tuesday, and showed Rage ahead, people sat up and took notice – but at that point, X Factor was briefly ahead on the digital sales.  And besides, the singles chart counts from Sunday to Saturday; the RATM single had an extra day of sales, so it wasn’t too surprising to find it in the lead.  What’s more, the X Factor single didn’t come out on CD until Wednesday – and while CD singles aren’t a big deal for most releases these days, they do matter to X Factor releases, which sell in large numbers to very occasional record buyers.  When the CD single hit the shelves, the gap started to close rapidly.  By the time RATM themselves started doing the media rounds, pledging to donate their royalties to charity and hold a free show if they won, things were getting interesting.  RATM were still ahead with one day to go, but all logic said that the X Factor single would overtake it at the last minute.  And then… it didn’t.

You may well ask what exactly this proves.  After all, “Killing in the Name” was released by Sony – not just a major label, but the very same major label ultimately behind the X Factor single.  (Although claims that Simon Cowell personally stands to gain from its sales are apparently mistaken – it’s a different division.)  As an act of mass consumerism, the campaign is hardly the stuff of revolution.  Some people are claiming that it’s a victory for “real music”, whatever that means, but that’s a little silly; it’s at number one because of the campaign, not because half a million people suddenly woke up one week and decided they had a sudden urge to buy Rage Against The Machine’s seventeen-year-old debut single.

No, to understand this, you need to understand the quaint British tradition of taking the Christmas Number One seriously.  In the eighties and nineties, the race for the Christmas Number One was a big deal.  The same held for the first half of this decade.  And then the whole thing got hijacked by the X Factor.  I think that really pushed this campaign over the edge: not just the fact that X Factor coronation singles are invariably syrupy mush, but their appropriation and destruction of a beloved (if utterly pointless) national institution.  As much as anything else, this is about a big chunk of the British public putting its collective foot down and telling Simon Cowell that the Christmas Number 1 slot isn’t his personal property.

In interviews this week, Simon Cowell has liked to point out that most Christmas Number 1s were terrible.  He has a point.  It hasn’t been about “real music” in years.  Nor will it be next year.  In 2004, it was the lousy Band Aid 20 charity single.  In 2002, it was another reality TV release, the debut single from Girls Aloud.  2001 was a novelty duet between Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman.  2000 was Bob the Builder.  1999 was Westlife.  And before that, there was a similar stretch of dominance by the Spice Girls.  1995 was “Earth Song.”  1993 was Mr Blobby.  1992 was “I Will Always Love You.”  Go back to the eighties, and you get two Cliff Richard singles, two fifties throwbacks, and Renee & Renato.  The full list is here – and yes, it’s mostly crap.

But that’s not the point.  When the British public think about the Christmas number one, they think fondly back to the days when it was a race.  Sometimes something half-decent won, like boy band Easy 17’s “Stay Another Day” in 1994.

Or “2 Become 1” in 1996, or even the occasional genuine classic like the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” in 1981.  More often, it was something jawdroppingly awful, but that was part of the charm too.  Here’s veteran MOR singer Cliff Richard with his 1988 Christmas number 1, “Mistletoe and Wine.”  Look out for the cutting edge choreography in the last couple of minutes.

The point is, it’s about the contest, even if the contest is pointless.  And that’s why people resent the X Factor coronation singles in large enough quantities to pull off something like this.  Nobody would care if it came out in February.

Is the music irrelevant, then?  Not entirely.  The X Factor winning single is always supposed to be the pay-off to the story that they’ve been telling on the screen, and it’s usually a cover version of a song that makes all the right points; “Killing in the Name” was chosen because its sheer inappropriateness, utter randomness, and vaguely unfocussed yelling was perfect for the story the other side wanted to tell.  In both cases, it’s not about what the song actually says, it’s about what it means (or is meant to mean) in context.  It’s all very Phonogram.

You’ll note I haven’t said much about the X Factor single itself.  It’s by 18-year-old Joe McElderry, a sweet if bland kid who does have a decent voice, albeit one that seems more suited for musicals, and who has had the misfortune to get caught in the crossfire here.  That said, he’s such an archetypal X Factor contestant that it probably hasn’t helped.  If somebody like runner-up Olly Murs had won – more of a personality, a bit less anonymous – I wonder whether it would have made a difference.  In some gloriously misjudged interviews earlier in the week, Cowell and fellow judge Cheryl Cole accused campaigners of “bullying” McElderry.  Coming from a show that deliberately invites bad singers back to be humiliated on national television before a mocking audience, they would be in no position to take the moral high ground on that one, even if it were true.

McElderry’s single, in another questionable call by Cowell, is “The Climb”, a cover of a Miley Cyrus song taken from the soundtrack to Hannah Montana: The Movie.  It’s a choice that practically embodies all that is safe, boring and corporate about the X Factor; despite furious endeavours on the part of her record company, Miley Cyrus has not yet taken off as a mainstream star in Britain outside her original Disney audience, and hitching McElderry to her, however remotely, was probably an error intself.  It’s also, ironically, a song about the importance of trying your best and working hard, because it’s not the winning that counts, “it’s the climb.” 

Chances are we’ll be coming back to “The Climb” next week, because X Factor coronation singles tend to stay at the top for several weeks, while RATM is a one-week protest stunt.  This has, in fact, happened before – back in the show’s first year, Steve Brookstein entered at number 2, though he had the excuse of competing with Band Aid 20.  He climbed to number one the next week.  McElderry will probably do the same.

McElderry could also, with some justification, point out that RATM’s total probably contains a hell of a lot more duplicate purchases than his – and that with only 50,000 in it, RATM’s extra day of sales might conceivably have tipped the balance.  In fact, his record sold as well as the other X Factor winners.

Wrapping up, we might as well note that Rage Against the Machine had a total of six UK top 40 hits during their original career.  Until this week, their biggest hit was actually “Bulls on Parade”, which made number 8 in 1996.  Frankly, it’s not one of their better ones, so here’s the video for “Sleep Now In The Fire” instead.

And Simon Cowell can take comfort in this: he may not have the number one spot, but his show does still dominate the rest of the chart.  Between them, X Factor alumni and judges, and old songs charting on the strength of an X Factor cover, take up 11 slots on this week’s chart.  Throw in Susan Boyle and you get 12.  And that’s before we even get on to songs by other artists which were promoted on the results show.  But still, it’s not quite his world any more, this week.

This week’s other new entries:

• 3oh3 featuring Katy Perry, “Starstrukk” at number 5.  Brave decision to release a regular pop single in Christmas week, presumably hoping for a clear run at the top in the New Year.  I wouldn’t bet against it.
• Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin'” at number 9, because Joe sang it on the X Factor final.
• George Michael, “December Song” at number 14, also promoted on the X Factor.  Weirdly melancholy.  Apparently the CD singles sold out early in the week, so it could have done better.
• Leona Lewis, “Stop Crying Your Heart Out” at number 29… because she sang it on the X Factor finals.
• Miley Cyrus, “The Climb” at number 31, for obvious reasons.
• Queen and the Muppets, “Bohemian Rhapsody” at number 32, as it turns out that most people were happy enough watching it on YouTube.
• Alexandra Burke, “Broken Heels” at number 36 – the next single from the 2008 winner.
• The Pet Shop Boys, “It Doesn’t Often Snow at Christmas” at number 40, completely lost in the shuffle.