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.
Yeah, that happened. It isn’t what made the song huge though. It was was a massive hit and a rebellion anthem since 1992.
The 2009 Christmas blip was so minor, Morello decided to give the earnings away to charity.
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.