Because RATM is one of the greatest albums of all time and screaming “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” is massively badass.
And many people don’t actually understand their political stance. People actually got mad they “became political”.
Killing in the Name was Christmas Number 1 in 2009, it was a protest against X Factor domination. That was before streaming counted towards the charts, but it really made the song huge.
It was a great upset. And then for #1 spot on the UK Christmas charts, BBC invited RATM to play the song live. They were asked to keep it censored, of course they did not. Show was awkwardly cut short. Performance went viral. The rest is history.
Saw them in concert in ‘94. Zach tried to start a riot against the cops. I was young, scared, thought he was wrong.
He was right
Gonna give another interesting take,
RATM’s eponymous album considered to have one of the best Mix and Master ever, so we sound engineers use that exact track to test and calibrate different sound systems. I always play Killing in the Name first to hear what’s different in a sound system. I’m sure me only contributed around 5k of that stat over the years.
That’s probably just Paul Ryan listening to the song on repeat.
