When Matt Cardle crooned the first line of the first verse of his soon-to-be winning X Factor single When We Collide on December 12 of 2010, in a showdown which saw him facing off against One Direction, at the same time on sofas up and down the United Kingdom people were turning to their loved ones and uttering the disbelieving words, "Isn't that a Biffy Clyro song?"
A bizarre turn of events to say the least, but also, considering just how far the Biff had come in the ten years they had spent causing chaos on the UK underground circuit, also not that out of pocket at all at the same time. For the band themselves, being approached to have their single Many Of Horror, a centrepiece of their 2010 full-length Only Revolutions, covered on the programme just showed that the different corners of the music industry aren't as wide set as they may once have seemed.
"Britain's a small place," drummer Ben Johnston told Australian radio station Undercover FM. "Everybody knows everybody, certainly in something like the music industry. He said it was a great song and he should use it."
With that latter "he" being Cardle, that makes the former "he" Simon Cowell, who, with his entertainment company Syco Entertainment, had a stranglehold on popular culture in the UK in the first decade of the Millennium, thanks in big part to the success of programmes such as Pop Idol and, eventually, The X Factor.
From 2005, the race for Christmas Number One had been commandeered by winners of the show, starting with Shane Ward, followed by Leona Lewis in 2006, Leon Jackson in 2007, and Alexandra Burke in 2008. Such a trend ended in 2009 thanks to a magnificent plot to place Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name at the top of the tree instead Joe McEldeery's take on Miley Cyrus' The Climb; a campaign that was successful and resulted in a legendary free show at London's Finsbury Park and Zach de la Rocha saying, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" live on BBC radio despite being told multiple times not to.
Perhaps because said campaign had more of a pro-song approach than an anti-Cowell vibe, the powers that be were looking for something different in the song that would suit a winner of TV's biggest talent show. As 2010 rolled around, the powers that be were looking for something different in their approach to what song would suit a winner of TV's biggest talent show. Something actually brilliant to represent their brand. And there are few bands more perfectly attached to brilliance than Biffy.
Like many of the greatest songs ever written, Many Of Horror is about love. Though rather than the saccharine sweet sentiments that so often have appeared on Top Of The Pops, for Biffy, the song was a chance to show off as much of the bad as the good when it comes to being utterly head over heels.
"It’s about being so madly in love that you can’t live without someone, yet you know that you equally want to kill each other at times," vocalist Simon Neil told the Guardian during an acoustic live session in 2010. Such a feeling slots in nicely on an album like Only Revolutions, a collection of songs released on November 09 2009, that, on the surface, was their most accessible work to date, especially compared to their already available discography.
Though that doesn't mean that any of the trio's love for wild expression was dulled, what with the frantic exploration of That Golden Rule, gritty pop frills of Cloud Of Stink or the wonderful weirdness of Born On A Horse sitting pretty at its centre.
"We like to try and surprise people", Ben told The Quietus on the week of release. "The last thing we want to do is make something that anyone would expect us to make. We don’t want to go for the safe bet, it’s boring."
"If we were still trying to write songs like we did when we were 18, then I think we’d look and sound a bit stupid," Simon would add. "There's a lot of hope and love in there."
Entering the charts at No.08 on release, it would steadily but surely gain more and more traction as time went on. It would be officially certified Platinum by June 2010, shifting 300,000 copies before gaining a nomination for the Mercury Prize, which allowed it to reach a new chart peak of No.03 in September around the ceremony. It's no wonder that Cowell and Co. had their interests piqued by the time it came around to choosing a song for Cardle to sing.
Biffy were actually on tour in Australia during the lead-up to the X Factor final, playing some absolutely massive shows supporting Metallica, one of a few experiences they were still getting used to being part of. "We grew up in the underground punk scene, and it took us a long time to stop feeling guilty about enjoying big shows and enjoying playing big shows," Neil would tell Q101, with the likes of The Rolling Stones, U2 and The Who also eventually getting ticked off the bucket list.
Though it's this continued feeling of being in the middle - somewhere between still associating themselves with the bars and clubs rather than the arenas and stadiums that they were ending up in - that goes a long way to describing how they ended up feeling about the reaction to When We Collide premiering, named in such a way so the band would still come up when the original song was searched. Because up until then, it was still just a bit of a laugh.
"We thought it was weird enough to be funny," Simon told The Guardian in 2013. "It was only when we got home that we worried if it was a terrible thing. But it felt nice to infiltrate things our way. We haven't gone begging to any fucker ever. People have always come round to our way of thinking. And I have to say my mum would have been over the moon about a Christmas No 1!"
That's precisely what happened, too. 17.7 million people saw Cardle beat One Direction, who went on to do pretty well for themselves, with the song officially releasing right there and then. It sold 439,000 copies in its first six days, securing its place at the top of the Xmas chart.
Off the back of the success that the RATM campaign had in the year previous, there were similar Facebook-born pursuits to try and make the magic happen twice, with The Trashmen's 1964 hit Surfin' Bird finishing at No.03 and 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence courtesy of a group called Cage Against The Machine, a parody of John Cage's peaceful classic 4 33 finishing at No.21.
Yet there was one campaign that was directly to do with Biffy, with fans rallying for people to pick up the band's version of the song rather than Cardle's, which ended up with Many Of Horror hitting No.08 with 40,000 sales. Quite the achievement in itself. "Biffy Clyro have been working hard as a band for many years now and, in my opinion, haven't yet achieved the recognition they deserve," the group's organiser wrote. "So rather than this being about 'sticking it to Cowell' or whatever - this is about recognising the original artist for their creativity."
Though the race for the top was done and dusted, the discourse around the song didn't slow as the calendar moved into 2011. Perhaps perturbed by the conversation staying on the track whilst the band continued to make their own moves, Neil told the Guardian, "It's not really made any difference to us. People might recognise the name a little more, but it's not altered who comes to shows. And if you buy the X Factor single, you're not really a music fan anyway, are you?"
For Cardle himself, the conversation continued to centre on his credibility and association with the song, given that his version features a key change that's obviously absent from the original.
"I leapt at the chance to do it because it’s not your average winner’s song. It’s not cheesy, and I’m sorry if I’ve ruined it for people, but it’s credible," he told MTV, before commenting on the song that was pipped to the post by Killing In The Name in 2009. "I mean, with Miley Cyrus' The Climb, you can kind of shit on a Miley Cyrus song and not many people are going to care because fans of The Climb by Miley Cyrus are children. They are not going to be like 'Oh god, I can't believe they've done a cover', but when it comes to Biffy Clyro, they have a hardcore, die-hard fanbase and are a hugely credible band. You can't fuck around with one of their songs."
Both quotes feel like they were born from tabloid pressure, a need to keep some fire and fury burning between the worlds of pop and rock, the industry machine and the underground, where perhaps the whole context of the situation gets blown out of hand by the pursuit of headlines. The want and need for a head-on collision between parties.
The truth of the matter is that there was nothing but love between Clyro and Cardle, no matter how much people may have wanted a scrap.
"We’ve definitely had a lot more people checking us out since he covered our song," Simon would eventually tell The Daily Star “But those people who turn up at shows for the first time get the fright of their lives when they realise we’re a full-on rock band, adding when asked about Matt, “He likes good music, he likes real bands and he liked our song, so I’ve nothing but respect for him."
Even as recently as this year, Neil has shown how thankful he is for the opportunity and for the way it played out.
"At the time, an X Factor pop performer doing one of our songs was seen as blasphemous, which is probably why I liked it," he said to The Guardian in reply to a fan's question. "We’ve got the worst name in history and were making weird music to purposely alienate people, and suddenly The X Factor came to us. I love the fact that [Cardle’s version of] our song became the mainstream Christmas No 1 – it’s one of the most iconoclastic things we’ve done."
2011 would also see Biffy headline a festival for the first time, with their slot plonked between The Big Four and Slipknot on the Sonisphere line-up. In the 14 years that have followed, it has become a welcome home for the band, with them sitting at the top of the Download Festival bill in 2017 and 2022, appearing on the Isle of Wight Festival line-up in 2019, and closing TRNSMT in both 2017 and 2025.
2026 will see them hit Kendal Calling as well as play their biggest ever show at Finsbury Park, with a capacity of 45,000. The beauty of these accolades is the variety of people they bring. And though they were well on their way to becoming a band of this stature either way, the eyes and ears that discovered them because of their brush with Saturday night prime time cannot be overstated.
More than anything, it is a show for what marching to your own beat can do. That even 15 years ago, when rock music was at a real precipice in terms of its place within the zeitgeist, bands could still make a difference. And fast-forward to now, that same sentiment is burning, and maybe even burning brighter.
"It’s really nice to see rock music really rearing its head and becoming hungry again. Becoming something that the next generation want to be a part of," Simon told Matt Pinfield for The SoCal Sound earlier this year. But the thing is, that's precisely what Biffy Clyro did. It's what they continue to do. Many of Horror, and subsequently When We Collide, went a long way toward cementing that fact.
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