14 DAY TRIAL // This year’s winter holiday season brought an overturn in British music charts that surprised even critics. Until now, the singles that usually made it all the way through to the top positions were releases from X Factor alums. Rage Against the Machine intervened this year and managed to turn things around, occupying the first spot in UK music charts.
Now, Marilyn Manson plans to do the same for the upcoming year. Of course, he will not personally go against music mogul Simon Cowell and his protégées, but he is of the opinion that only “real music” should reign the charts and not manufactured pop artists. One candidate that would fit the description would be Nine Inch Nails, Manson believes, as cited by The Sun.
“I don’t have anything against Simon Cowell and The X Factor,” the shock rocker is quoted as saying. “It’s just nice to see real music at the top of the charts. Somebody should try to do it next year. Can I suggest one of Nine Inch Nails’ best tracks called Star[expletive]ers Inc? We should try to make it a yearly thing,” Manson adds. As it happens, he might not be alone in thinking that the music industry is saturated with stars and material coming from the television realm, talent competitions in particular.
Still, Cowell is the first to disagree with that take on his contribution to the industry, as one would expect him to. In a recent interview with NME magazine, the mogul stated that he almost single-handedly “saved” the music industry by bringing new faces on the scene and getting audiences to care again. This, in turn, has led to an increase in the number of CDs sold, which, for an industry in decline for many years now, is no insignificant feat.
“The music industry was in a huge decline. What I would argue in my defense is that shows like Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor have actually got people more interested in music again and are sending more people into record stores. We haven’t seen this kind of uplift in years,” Cowell was saying a short while ago, as we also reported.