VETERAN Aussie rockers AC/DC may be riding a sleigh on the Highway to Hell thanks to a Facebook campaign aiming to make the song the UK Christmas Number One.
Almost 83,000 people have so far backed a campaign to get the 1979 anthem to the top of the chart to celebrate 40 years since the band formed in Sydney.
The UK X-Factor winner’s single is also slated for release in Christmas week and is the current favourite. But AC/DC may provide a useful protest vote for people who dislike the pop reality show.
“It’s more of a public display of affection for AC/DC than an ‘anti’ X-Factor campaign but boy would we love to beat them in the charts,” the campaign’s organisers wrote on Facebook.
A previous online campaign in 2009 successfully prevented the reality show’s winner Joe McElderry topping the festive chart.
Instead, Killing in the Name, an expletive-heavy anti-establishment rock song by US band Rage Against the Machine, originally released in 1992, finished top of the pile.
Highway to Hell may prove a poignant choice for fans. The eponymous album it is taken from was the last recorded by the band with original frontman Bon Scott before his death in 1980.
The band was formed by brothers Angus and Malcolm Young in 1973 in Sydney and named after the AC/DC tag they spied on the back of their sister’s sewing machine. They have gone on to become one of the best-selling rock acts of all time.
Click here to support the AC/DC Christmas Number One campaign.
By David Wilcock (AAP)
