{"id":186935,"date":"2013-08-17T19:37:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-18T00:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/08\/17\/this-has-to-be-the-coolest-response-to-blatant-plagiarism-ever\/"},"modified":"2013-08-17T19:37:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-18T00:37:00","slug":"this-has-to-be-the-coolest-response-to-blatant-plagiarism-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/08\/17\/this-has-to-be-the-coolest-response-to-blatant-plagiarism-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"This Has to be the Coolest Response to Blatant Plagiarism Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 310px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"169\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bKGzhhdX224\" width=\"300\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>Roll Tape<\/i><\/div>\n<p>The boy band One Direction released a new song, <i> Best Song Ever<\/i>, which is blatantly cribbed from The Who&#8217;s 1871 asnthem <i>Baba O&#8217;Reily<\/i>.  (see tape)<\/p>\n<p>Pete Townshend has been remarkably sanguine about this, despite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2013\/08\/16\/one_direction_twitterstorm\/\">death threats from One Direction fans<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">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.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">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&#8217;s 1971 track Baba O&#8217;Riley.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Twitterstorm first began brewing after a music reviewer on MTV.com commented about the track on 17 July: &#8220;[It] opens with a riff that sounds very similar to the Who&#8217;s Baba O&#8217;Riley.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">A few days later, on ClickMusic, another reviewer slated the X Factor losers&#8217; song, calling 1D&#8217;s songwriting team &#8220;creatively barren&#8221; and stating that &#8220;someone should call Trading Standards&#8221;.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The &#8220;Directioners&#8221; apparently tweeted and retweeted the article before the rumour began that Pete Townshend&#8217;s band was actually threatening legal action, although it had not.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Guitarist and songwriter Townshend, famed for smashing his guitar on stage, issued the following statement last night:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">I like One Direction. The chords I used and the chords they used are the same three chords we&#8217;ve all been using in basic pop music since Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry made it clear that fancy chords don&#8217;t mean great music \u2013 not always. I&#8217;m still writing songs that sound like Baba O&#8217;Riley \u2013 or I&#8217;m trying to!<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">It&#8217;s a part of my life and a part of pop&#8217;s lineage. One Direction are in my business, with a million fans, and I&#8217;m happy to think they may have been influenced a little bit by The Who. I&#8217;m just relieved they&#8217;re all not wearing boiler suits and Doc Martens, or Union Jack jackets.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">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.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a remarkably menschlichkeit response on the part of Townshend.<\/p>\n<p>I am not particularly surprised, he has always been rather philosophical about such things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roll Tape The boy band One Direction released a new song, Best Song Ever, which is blatantly cribbed from The Who&#8217;s 1871 asnthem Baba O&#8217;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 &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[997,1109,1137,1027],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-ip","category-music","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}