Photo: WENN
Jake Bugg has made it very clear he is no fan of One Direction. They're relatively far apart on the musical spectrum, we suppose - not entirely different extremes, but basically the equivalent of NME and Top of the Pops magazines. So it's understandable that they may not get along - but a bit more puzzling is why Jake Bugg just doesn't seem able to shut up about them at the moment.
Judging from his recent quotes on the boyband, Bugg's main issue with One Direction seems to be that they don't write their own music and, as such, are completely invalid. "They're there to look good," he said. "Music wise? I assume they don't have a clue." Which is odd, because there are a lot of people who don't write songs - at all - and are still able to understand music and form an opinion on it. Plus, Bugg has said in the past that he's a fan of Elvis - yes, Elvis Presley, who rarely wrote any of his own songs.
Katy Perry, by the way, is credited as a songwriter on every single song from her album Teenage Dream - including the hideous 'Peacock' which, lest we forget, includes the lyrics "I wanna see you peacock, cock, cock," repeated ad nauseum. But it's okay, because she wrote them all herself.
It's not just that One Direction don't write their own music, although that does seem to be a big part of it. Another issue with the band seemed to be The Beatles comparisons - "People [call them the new Beatles] because they broke America, but that don't mean a thing," Bugg said. Except... it does. The comparison comes from the fact that One Direction's debut album went straight to number one in America, which has not been done before, and the last time we saw this reaction to a British band in the States was with - you guessed it - The Beatles.
The Beatles in New York. Definitely nothing like One Direction, at all
If people were comparing One Direction to The Beatles as a band and in terms of the music they create, Bugg would be entirely justified in complaining about it because - as he never fails to mention - One Direction don't write their own songs, and The Beatles did.
But The Beatles were a boyband in their day. If we overlook the fact that they did write their own music, the comparisons between the two bands aren't entirely baseless. The Beatles were a mainstream boyband who were absolutely worshipped by girls - girls who screamed so loud, in fact, that The Beatles couldn't hear themselves performing their own music at concerts. Once again, there seems to be room for comparison with One Direction here.
Bugg says, when criticising One Direction, "As a songwriter it's very hard to listen to music that's not coming from the heart and soul personally." But John Lennon said himself about the band's debut album that he and Paul McCartney were "just writing songs à la Everly Brothers, à la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought of them than that - to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant."
Incidentally if we just take a moment to reassess the criticism that One Direction are invalid for not writing their own music - The Beatles' debut album, Please Please Me, also included six songs that weren't written by the band - including 'Twist and Shout' and 'A Taste of Honey'. Members of One Direction have co-writing credits on three songs on their debut album Up All Night, and five songs on Take Me Home (if the bonus tracks are included).
One of the main reasons that artists - because it's not just Jake Bugg who has spoken out against the band - seem to hate them is because One Direction's fanbase is primarily teenage girls who, yes, like the way the boys look. But they also like listening to their music - and what's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with enjoying music and there's also nothing wrong with enjoying pop music, even if Jake Bugg disagrees.
Pop music is where artists sell the most - One Direction sold 8.3 million copies of their albums last year, which makes them in part responsible for the music industry actually turning a profit for the first time in 15 years.
One Direction - the worst band ever. It's like we've all forgotten about Nickelback...
But One Direction are so predictable, cry the 'haters'. They made up an award at the BRITs just to give them! You'd never find that at, say, the NME awards, who are singlehandedly saving rock 'n' roll.
No, despite the fact that One Direction have won Worst Band two years in a row (you REALLY can't think of anyone worse out there!?), and before that the Jonas Brothers won the Worst Band award THREE years in a row, with the same bands (including The Killers and Muse) winning NME awards year after year.
One Direction are an easy target, and it's tiring hearing them constantly get criticised for making some generic pop music and bouncing around the stage a little bit. Boybands will always exist so long as there's a need for them, and we need to get over the attitude and sense of elitism that popular music is automatically bad.
And if you're looking for artists to hate, there's a lot worse than One Direction.
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