Rage against X Factor in chart battle

10:28 | Tuesday December 15, 2009

According to early sales figures from the Official Charts Company, the band’s 1993 hit Killing In The Name has opened up a lead of about 10% over The Climb, the debut single from X Factor winner Joe McElderry.

The Rage Against The Machine track, which was the band’s first UK hit single and originally reached number 25 in 1993, has been propelled into the Christmas chart battle by a Facebook group campaign to try to stop X Factor landing the festive chart-topper for the fifth successive year.

However, the RATM single, which like McElderry’s is a Sony release, will face increased competition as the week progresses as a physical version of The Climb will be released on Wednesday. Hollywood/Polydor act Miley Cyrus’s original hit version is also likely to make the Top 40 this Sunday.

Until now, X Factor winners have had an impressive strike rate in reaching number one at Christmas with their debut releases, the run beginning with the ITV show’s first winner Shayne Ward in 2005 and then continuing with Leona Lewis, Leon Jackson and Alexandra Burke who topped last year’s Christmas chart with her version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. The debut single from Steve Brookstein, who won the show in 2004, was released too late for the festive number one slot.

Whatever the eventual outcome of the race, the two singles are likely to be joined in the Christmas Top 10 by a handful of other releases linked to X Factor’s two final shows broadcast last weekend. Virgin’s Robbie Williams You Know Me, which he performed on last Saturday’s show, is poised to climb into the top five, while George Michael’s Island-issued single December Song (I Dreamed Of Christmas), which featured on last Sunday’s main final, should debut in and around the Top 10. Meanwhile, Journey’s early Eighties hit Don’t Stop Believin’ could be heading into the UK Top 10 for this first time after McElderry performed it on last Sunday’s show.

Although new closest challenger Reprise/Warner Bros’s Michael Buble is closing the gap with Crazy Love, Syco’s Susan Boyle’s looks very likely to spend a fourth consecutive at the top of the artist albums chart on Sunday with I Dreamed A Dream. Interscope/Polydor’s Black Eyed Peas and Lady GaGa and Epic’s JLS presently join Boyle and Buble in the week’s top five sellers, while Virgin’s Robbie Williams and Syco’s Leona Lewis are benefiting from X Factor performances and could well return to the Top 10 as a result.

Paul McCartney, who also performed on last Sunday’s X Factor show, is currently just outside the week’s Top 20 sellers with his newly-issued Hear Music/Mercury album Good Evening New York City, a few places behind J/RCA’s new Alicia Keys album The Element Of Freedom.