The boy band One Direction released a new song, Best Song Ever, which is blatantly cribbed from The Who’s 1871 asnthem Baba O’Reily. (see tape)

Pete Townshend has been remarkably sanguine about this, despite death threats from One Direction fans:

Legendary rockers The Who have announced they have no plans to ask One Direction to withdraw their new track Best Song Ever after a digital mob of rabid teenage girls bombarded them with death threats.

The English rock band issued the statement yesterday, weeks after the boy band released their hit song. From the day of its release, Best Song Ever had prompted various music columnists to make comparisons with the English band’s 1971 track Baba O’Riley.

The Twitterstorm first began brewing after a music reviewer on MTV.com commented about the track on 17 July: “[It] opens with a riff that sounds very similar to the Who’s Baba O’Riley.

A few days later, on ClickMusic, another reviewer slated the X Factor losers’ song, calling 1D’s songwriting team “creatively barren” and stating that “someone should call Trading Standards”.

The “Directioners” apparently tweeted and retweeted the article before the rumour began that Pete Townshend’s band was actually threatening legal action, although it had not.

………

Guitarist and songwriter Townshend, famed for smashing his guitar on stage, issued the following statement last night:

I like One Direction. The chords I used and the chords they used are the same three chords we’ve all been using in basic pop music since Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry made it clear that fancy chords don’t mean great music – not always. I’m still writing songs that sound like Baba O’Riley – or I’m trying to!

It’s a part of my life and a part of pop’s lineage. One Direction are in my business, with a million fans, and I’m happy to think they may have been influenced a little bit by The Who. I’m just relieved they’re all not wearing boiler suits and Doc Martens, or Union Jack jackets.

If you have paid any attention to the British press in recent months, you may have got the impression that nasty, nerdy male trolls were solely responsible for onine death threats. Well, it appears that teenage girls are just as bad.

This is a remarkably menschlichkeit response on the part of Townshend.

I am not particularly surprised, he has always been rather philosophical about such things.