Can Joe McElderry Keep Rage At Bay With His Video For ‘The Climb’?

Robbie Daw | December 18, 2009 10:31 am

Despite The X Factor ending last weekend with a victory for Joe McElderry, the 18-year-old British crooner is still facing some stiff competition.

McElderry’s by-the-numbers winnner’s song, a cover of Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb (see the video below in all its slapped-together-in-two-days glory),” should have been a shoe-in for this year’s Christmas #1 single in the U.K.  However, a massive anti-X Factor campaign to get Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name” to the top kicked off started on Facebook earlier this month, and both singles are now in a neck-and-neck race.

“Fed up of Simon Cowell’s latest karaoke act being Christmas No.1? Me too,” reads a December 6 post on the Rage Against The Machine For Christmas No. 1 Facebook group. “So who’s up for a mass-purchase of the track ‘KILLING IN THE NAME’ from December 13th (DON’T BUY IT YET!) as a protest to the X Factor monotony?”

And the X Factor hateration seems to be paying off—”Killing In The Name” is currently raging against Joe at the U.K. iTunes store, and has been the top download for several days.

British paper The Daily Mail notes that “although music stores expected a massive sale on Saturday of McElderry’s song, it’s not beyond the possibility now that Simon Cowell might suffer a case of Rage Rage on Sunday.”

Ooh, that’s right—sometimes it’s hard to remember that those long-lost objects known as CD singles are still available for purchase in some countries.

Martin Talbot, managing director of Britain’s Official Charts Company, told the Mail, “This is shaping up to be a very exciting battle between two different records which have captured the nation’s imagination.”

The official U.K. singles chart won’t be published until Sunday. Until then, here’s Joe McElderry belting out Grammy un-nominated tune “The Climb” in his new music video: