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One Direction, The Who Twitter War Over Lawsuit Fans Say May Quash ‘Best Song Ever’

By Elaine Radford
Published on: 12:46 PST, Aug 14, 2013

The Who will sue One Direction on the grounds that Best Song Ever borrowed a little too much from enduring classic Baba O’Riley. That’s the rumor blowing up my Twitter feed on Wednesday night, as One Direction fans have finally caught onto the fact that people have been whispering about the borrowed intro on BSE for quite some while.

It seems to me that we’ve been here before. On July 20, I talked briefly about what One Direction Producer Julian Bunetta had to say to MTV about The Who Baba O’Riley rumors.

He admitted to the similarities between the two songs but denied any copyright violation: “At a certain point we recognized it had the same type of intro where there’s a synth and a piano, but we really tried to make sure that there was no intellectual property stolen or anything like that…”

It’s up to your ears whether or not One Direction succeeded in doing something creative. I don’t think they did.

But I think a lawsuit by The Who would be giving the boyband a lot of unnecessary cred. Do you really want your name in the same court documents with One Direction if you’re a serious rock legacy?

But that’s my opinion and not The Who’s or Pete Townshend’s. We don’t know yet if a lawsuit will be filed or not.

It’s not unreasonable to guess that The Who may indeed sue for a cut of One Direction’s Best Song Ever profits.

But The Who will not magically delete One Direction’s Best Song Ever from the known universe. That’s just crazy Twitter talk, guys. I guess it could be dropped from the iTunes store or what have you. But it’s the internet. Nothing ever goes away.

Check out #DontTouchBestSongEver and #TheWho hashtags to get hit with more panicked, angry, and just plain paranoid tweets on the topic of the possible lawsuit than you could ever imagine.

But some 1D fans do have a sense of humor:

And some 1D fans accept that there’s an issue:

It’s almost beyond belief to me that there exists someone out there who has not heard The Who’s Baba O’Riley.

But, if such a person exists, then just click that button down below:

And here is the VEVO audio for One Direction’s Best Song Ever:

You can read my entire review of Best Song Ever here. Despite the nod to The Who and the attempt to copy some unearned cool, I don’t think there’s much similarity between the two. BSE will be forgotten by next summer. Baba O’Riley will evidently never die.

But I think people need to chill. Love it or love to hate it, BSE is not going to be deleted from our Earth.

If The Who sue One Direction over Best Song Ever, it will be for a cut of the profits. Some money will change hands. No biggie.

UPDATE: There’s no One Direction lawsuit coming from The Who. Fans will be happy with Pete Townshend’s generous response to the Best Song Ever controversy which you can read by clicking here.

[One Direction photo by Jaguar PS / Shutterstock.com]

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