Music: Five top tracks that put the Rock 'n' Roll into Christmas

With the war between mainstream music and 'alternative' hotting up in the charts over the Christmas number one, I decided to look at the best Christmas tunes the rockier side of music has to offer.

For those of you haven't heard, there's this little TV show called The X Factor, which managed to glue 19.1million people to their screens on Sunday night to see who would win what is essentially a karaoke competition.

Joe McElderry, 18 from South Shields, Tyneside, beat Olly Murs, 25 from Essex to win the show and release a Christmas single – a cover of 'The Climb' by Miley Cyrus.

In spite of this, a campaign started up on Facebook to get Rage Against The Machine's 'Killing In The Name Of' to the number one spot to prevent a run of five straight years of X Factor finalists.

So, now that's explained in enough detail for even the most TV-shy reader to understand (hopefully), let's think about Christmas music. Crazily catchy and repetitive (often to the point of tears), Christmas songs range from the blandness of Cliff Richard's 'Mistletoe and Wine' to the jolly 80s ballad-ness of Wham!'s 'Last Christmas'.

Not to say that some of the classics aren't...well...classic (in fact one or two may show up in a bit), but there's nothing particularly rock about prancing about on skis or getting children to sing the chorus for you.

With that in mind I've scanned the (not so) underground music scene to find five gems you may have missed, or just get that rock 'n' roll feeling absolutely right. Let's take a look, but not in an overly dramatic countdown way, it's not life and death people ;-):

5. The Ramones – 'Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)'

Released back in 1987 as a B-side to 'I Wanna Live' from Halfway to Sanity, the song combines the band's usual power-chord charged punk with a plea for peace at home at Christmas.

Admittedly not sophisticated, but the band still hold on to one of the staples of the Christmas single: the jingling bells. Hearing the Christmas message, which is, essentially, let's all get on and have a good time for one day at least, in such a raw and real-life way makes it something a little bit different, especially when you KNOW arguments about stupid things WILL happen. Check out the video for the song if you're not sure what I mean.

Since this was towards the end of the bands career, when they had taken more of a turn to the mainstream, you might think this track would be all clichés and happiness but it still retains the gritty nature of The Ramones and makes decent listening.

4. The Darkness – Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)

Continuing our theme of Song Title (The Bit You Remember), we have Lowestoft legends/wannabes The Darkness with their stab at the Christmas charts. Admittedly this was a proper pop/rock tune, but it's complete failure in the charts makes it one worthy of our consideration here, since it is a great example of everything we love (or tolerate) about The Darkness.

Since their decline into nothingness following a terrible follow-up album, the song has all but disappeared from the Christmas playlist, despite having guitar solos AND a choir of children, surely all the ingredients of a perfect Christmas number one..? Judge for yourself (particularly note the brothers duel guitaring)

Err...no actually, since the song only made it to a measly number TWO after being pipped at the post by a god-awful cover of Tears For Fears' 'Mad World' – which, personally, was the most depressing Christmas number one in history.

3. Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Wizards in Winter

From across the pond comes this bizarrely named outfit with an instrumental, not to be confused with WiZZard's 'I Wish it Could Be Christmas Every Day', which combines electric guitar and strings in an ELO-esque way, to create a tune which wouldn't sound too out of place on the soundtrack to The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Not that combining the orchestra with rock is anything ground-breaking, but the arrangement and string melody is enough to stick in you're head after only one listen, check it out for yourself if you don't believe me.

Having been introduced to the song by a friend I'm no expert, but she said it's very popular over in the states and “they are a hit because they make older, more classical songs 'cool'” - a bit like Apocalyptica then? Just think of it as the American version of Mike Oldfield's 'In Dulci Jubilo' – if you don't know the one I mean then it's that instrumental one with nice guitar licks you WISH you could play.

2. AC/DC – Mistress For Christmas

With 200 million albums sold worldwide, AC/DC are undoubtedly a legendary band. 'Back in Black', the group's breakthrough release, hold the

title of the best-selling album released by any band in history – 45million sold copies in total.

Fair enough, Christmas songs might not seem very rock 'n' roll, but this one is 100% AC/DC: the gang vocals, chorus being composed entirely of the song title, chugging bassline and lyrics about as subtle as a brick pummelling Simon Cowell's blindingly smug grin.

The familiar sound of Angus Young working his magic on the guitar is always a welcome one at Christmas, and despite the...un-P.C. message of the track it's still a brilliant song in its own right, building to the sort of crescendo only AC/DC can deliver with such class. Take a listen via the wonderment of YouTube and judge for yourself.

1. Slade – Merry Christmas Everybody!

By no means unheard of, Noddy Holder's hoarse wail of “It's Christmaaaaaaaass!” is the first thing to come to mind when someone mentions that the Christmas holidays are on the way. It's not as 'alternative' as the other tracks on the list and you'll find it on any decent Xmas compilation CD, but it clawed its way to the top of this list by having the right gung-ho attitude – not to mention the most memorable and cheerful chorus of any Christmas song.

The song was released in 1973 and became the b

and's sixth number one hit, knocking Wizzard's 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day' from the top spot and staying there for nine weeks.

Despite being written very much for the period, strangely history repeats itself, with the economic depression and unemployment of the 1970s haunting us this Christmas, so what better way to forget your troubles than to “look to the future”.

The video, taken from Top of the Pops (we still reme

mber that, right?), captures the atmosphere of the song perfectly and you can't help but smile at how young everyone looks.

Noddy Holder once complained that radio station

s play the song too early, explaining it's a song best listened to on Christmas morning amid the excitement of all the goodies which might be hidden under all that wrapping paper.

So comes the end to my little Christmas-based ramblings, hope you all have a good one, and be sure to check back once the fun is all over to find out how James Cameron's 3D epic Avatar turned out.

For now, Merry Xmas Everybody!

Music digitalisation: Does CD stand for Certain Doom?

Compact discs have long been the symbol of the music industry. Since their commercial introduction in 1982 as a joint venture between Phillips and Sony, over 200 billion CDs have been sold across the world (according to the BBC). That's an average of one million discs every hour.

But CD sales have slumped in recent years and global sales in 2009 will be half the level of the peak of the CD boom according to a survey by Enders.

Download services, such as iTunes or HMV Music, now generate around 7.5% of album purchases in the UK, a figure which rose 36% in 2008. (Sources: Offcom Digital Britain Report and The Guardian)

Illegal downloading is also still on the rise, with some 40 billion tracks being shared on sites like Limewire and Bittorrent in 2008 across 16 countries. Efforts by the Government to curb the rise have been met with apathy by the 'internet generation' - 14 to 24 year-olds - who “know that file sharing is illegal but will exploit whatever technology is available to enable them to enlarge their music collections for free” according to The Times.

Unfortunately for the industry, these illegal downloads make up 95% of the music being exchanged across the internet, losing artists and record companies £180m every year. Many alternative artists have voiced that they don't mind how people get their music as long as they hear it, but you feel as though few record company executives would agree.

The silver lining is that in a study conducted by the University of Hertfordshire which says 85% of the age group in question said they would continue to buy CDs even if they were given access to an unlimited legal download service. This shows that people still put value in 'owning' things rather than just 'streaming' them from internet services such as Last.fm or Spotify.

The reason that many feel it's 'OK' to download music is “mainly because it’s free and they are not going to get caught”, according to Feargal Sharkey, the former Undertones singer and chief executive of UK Music, an umbrella organisation which represents the industry.

Despite best efforts, talks between the industry and the Government have been crawling along for the past few years, with the Government last year proposing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should use a 'three-strike' letter writing system to warn offenders, giving them the responsibility to directly tackle the problem, which was reiterated in the Digital Britain report.

Punishments range from having bandwidth curbed to their internet being permanently suspended, according to The Times. Unfortunately there is still no right answer, and the discussions continue. We wondered what people really thought about it all, so we asked you:

Sarah White, 19, from Woodham said “You should be allowed to download music for free depending how long it's been out for.”

Andy Hemphill, 22, from Ewell said “Illegal downloading isn't immoral because music companies make music too expensive and are too slow to pick up on digital sales. It may be illegal but it will continue until they lower the cost of music.”

Lis Symons, 19, from Sandhurst said “I only download from iTunes now, because the others are all too much hassle. I always got viruses when I used Limewire, it's like it's one big virus.”

Colin Miller, 29, from London said “Maybe I'm just old and bitter but the good music doesn't get the credit it deserves these days, as most of it gets swallowed up by the X-Factor money-making machine.”

Kirsty Watkinson, 21, from Darwen said “There's nothing more delightful than having something concrete that you can touch and put up on the wall to represent the music you like, that's why I love CDs so much, but having digital copies of songs from CD is safer because they can't get scratched.”

MP3 players, specifically Apple's revolutionary iPod, have been the driving force behind music digitalisation and now almost half the population (48%) of people own and actively use and MP3/4 or mobile phone music player. This percentage hasn't increased significantly in the last two years though, suggesting the market may be at saturation point.

The industry has tried to react to changing consumer demand, with companies investing millions in music subscription services , but according to industry critics Deloittle, it's not enough:

“Music services may need to merge consumer features and benefits, such as a subscription service that comes with other deliverables e.g. portability and CDs, for consumers to believe that a music service is worth paying for.”

CDs may be fading away in the industry but they're far from dying out altogether. There's no question they'll be lying around cluttering up our lofts for some time to come, and there's a certain charm to listening to an album all the way through while as the artist intended.

One thing's for sure though, downloads are here to stay, and without punishments for downloaders there's no reason for people to stop, and with the number of tracks available increasing by thousands a day, why would they want to go all the way down the shops?

James Michael Parry

Is this the real life - Has reality TV finally lost the X-factor?

With X-Factor dominating our screens once again it's hard to see an end to the reality TV craze, but despite decent viewing figures, you can't help but feel the 'magic' of the show is beginning to fade.

Of course I'm bound to say that, as a self-confessed cynic, but surely even the faithful can see how doing the same show six times over can begin to grow stale. It's not like an edgy drama where you can kill off characters, get new directors or have some shocking plot twist (those wondering what I mean watch House immediately), because they are constrained by the rules of their own format.

The system was altered this year by an introduction of music and an audience at the audition stage. You can't help but feel a slight nod to Britain's Got Talent is due, but still the poor quality of some of the acts which reach our screens is enough to make even the hard-faced Cowell cringe.

There's never been any doubt that it is all an act. Cowell is the king, it's his show and he's ALWAYS right, even when he's being brutal and harsh it's never just to put someone down.

Unfortunately, because SO many people now apply for the show the process has been stripped down countless times to get through the vast amount of people looking for their big break. Thousands never make it to the judgemental glare of Cowell before they are told they don't have what it takes, and even then not everyone is given a fair chance, as the show would mystically have you believe.

One story I heard from a young man called Adam exemplified this 'injustice' more than most. Some would say "Well, that's the industry, you have to be lucky", but surely the point of a show like this is that everyone can have the same chance?

In Adam's case, he started with the best intentions: a level head, a clear mind and some actual vocal talent (always a plus). After reaching the first audition he was called through to potentially begin his musical career, only to be met by an apathetic, dazed individual, who he was told would be listening to him sing.

He walked in and told the judge his name and what he was going to sing, to which the man responded "Fine" staring off idly into the distance, barely even registering that Adam had come in. Despite being virtually ignored Adam went ahead and sang, and the apathetic judge let him through. As it turned out, this man was by no means a professional, just someone TalkbackThames had found to help out with the auditions, and wasn't given any training or guidance in how to pass or fail people, making the process a bit of a 'pot luck' scheme.

Another one or two rounds of similar treatment ensued before Adam found himself up against the real deal: the X-Factor judges themselves. Surely this is when it becomes serious? When the people who have got to that stage actually show some talent?

The audition organisation team pulled Adam aside before this crucial stage, but not to offer encouragement, to suggest that he change his song choices from the ones he'd been singing the whole process so far, the likes of Usher and Ne-Yo, to "something a bit more mainstream".

Adam wasn't too keen on the idea, but the team persisted "something like err...who's that guy? Oh, R Kelly, what about that 'I Believe I Can Fly' one?" Adam begrudgingly agreed.

Adam waited patiently backstage for his turn, listening to the acts before him, some good, some pretty bad, until he was told to get on stage and walked out before the panel and a room of excitable spectators to make or break his music career there and then.

Cowell asked him routinely which song he would be singing, and as Adam said the name his face quickly fell from receptive disapproving. He sang through about six seconds before Cowell decided he'd had enough and said: "Sorry, it's a no" to which his panel of puppets quickly concurred.

After all the time and energy put into the process it came down to six seconds of a song he was forced into singing, but that wasn't the worst thing about it.

A few weeks later when the show began to air, Adam noticed something interesting on the Xtra Factor (ITV2's cash in show designed to give more insight into the process). Host Holly Willoughby was talking to Cheryl Cole about big audition no-nos, and the first thing Cole said was "Well, anyone who sings 'I Believe I Can Fly' is out". Adam's face fell as the show cut to a montage of people performing the song, and he immediately saw himself performing the first line.

Never has it been more clear what X-Factor is, not a talent show, but a glorified freak show that builds hopes and shatters dreams needlessly.

With Big Brother 10 having suffered plummeting viewing figures compared to the shows hay-day, perhaps the shelf-life of X-Factor is almost due as well? Strictly Come Dancing has shown how the older generation can be lured into the petty past times of the TV-watching majority, though it's still managed to drag up it's own controversies (no pun intended - honest).

Probably the best way The Xfactor is summed up is in comedian Ben Elton's book 'Chart Throb', which satirically takes off the series in a way which you feel could so easily could be completely true. It splits contestants into four groups: Blingers, Clingers, Mingers and Singers.

Blingers are the over-the-top personalities that make up the Chicos and DJ Talents of this world, while Clingers are those so desperate for the opportunity to save their lives and usually have some ridiculous sob story attached. Next come the Mingers which speak for themselves really, serving as ammunition for the book's incarnation of Cowell to fire insults at by being so horrendously awful, and of course the Singers (a very small group) are those who may eventually win.

So the next time you join the masses in watching Simon and the gang try to find the next big thing, consider if you're watching it because it's genuinely entertaining or just because there's only dated films or the BBC's own version on the other side.