South Shields’ Joe McElderry speaks out on 2009 Christmas chart battle

We all remember the drama that surrounded the battle for the coveted Christmas number one spot on the charts in 2009. If you don’t - a little recap.

Since its beginning in 2004, The X Factor had dominated the charts with their winners single. However, the first X Factor winner to achieve the Christmas number one spot was Shane Ward with That’s My Goal, who won the second series in 2005.

From then, it became natural and quite frankly, expected that each X Factor winner from every year would achieve the Christmas number one. That was certainly the case for 2006 winner Leona Lewis, 2007’s Leon Jackosn and 2008’s Alexandra Burke.

Until 2009, when South Shields’ Joe McElderry won the talent competition at only 18-years-old, and released his winners single, a cover of Miley Cyrus’ The Climb.

A campaign to ensure an X Factor winner did not get to Christmas number one that year was set up on Facebook by DJ Jon Morter. The campaign promoted the 1992 metal track Killing In The Name by Rage Against The Machine, and Jon was successful in his efforts.

Now, 13 years after the widely-publicised debacle, Joe McElderry who is now 31-years old spoke about the situation on BBC Sounds podcast, The Talent Factory, which is hosted by Amelia Lily.

He met with Jon for the first time, and actually thanked him for his campaign, going on to say that it helped with publicity. He said: “It sold a lot of records off the back of a very high interest in who was going to get number one.”

Although Jon expressed guilt toward the situation, Joe took it completely on the chin, calling the chart battle “healthy competition”. He told Jon: “There are no hard feelings on my end.”