Does One Direction have “Best SongEver,” or Just a Rip Off?

One Direction has been busy promoting their upcoming album, which is expected to hit stores in December of this year. For the past week or so they’ve been teasing fans with snippets of their next single, Best Song Ever. Like everything else online though, this one got leaked late last week and fans could hear the song in its entirety. The question is now, is it really their song?

While the song title may sound cheeky and over-confident at first (a strategic move on the part of the band, no doubt) the lyrics speak of a boyfriend and his girl dancing to “the best song ever.” Normally that would make for a very fun, and very smart, song, but in this one there’s a problem. The intro doesn’t just sound like, it’s identical to, the intro of The Who’s Baba O’Riley.

The obvious explanation is that it was an intentional move by the boys, to give homage to a song that they – and millions of rock fans – believe to truly be one of the “best songs ever.” That’s what was believed as soon as the song was leaked, but that thought was quickly corrected by the band’s producer, Julian Bunetta. And her statement could be of detriment to the boys of One Direction, as it sounds as though they did know it was the same, and simply just tried to pass it off as their own.

“Well I mean it starts with a synth and Baba O’Riley starts with a synth,” said Bunetta. “I mean that’s a huge compliment because if we can evoke that same excitement than that’s amazing but that was not the…we weren’t saying, “OK, let’s rip off Baba O’Riley.”

What do you think? Is the explanation good enough? And do you think the similarities between the two intros was intentional? Listen to the track here and decide for yourself.

Categorized in: Music