The Beatles are said to be one of the most iconic and successful bands in music history; the boy band took the world by storm in the 1960s with “Beatlemania.” Since then, the U.K. has not produced another music group that has attracted that much attention. Until now. The British boy band One Direction is now giving The Beatles a run for their money in terms of fame. Kill me for saying this, but… despite obvious musical differences and questionable talent, One Direction and The Beatles are pretty similar. The Beatles had girls running after their car and “fan-girling” all over pretty much anything they could get their hands on…and so does One Direction. The reason it seems so dramatic and over the top now is because all of these fan-girls have access to social media. If Twitter and Tumblr were around in the 60s, everyone would hate Beatles fan-girls too!
People get offended when you compare The Beatles—whom many consider to be the greatest band of all time— to One Direction; they say it is degrading to The Beatles. What they don’t know is that people, especially guys, hated The Beatles in the beginning. The Beatles’ first few albums were pop love songs that targeted the ladies. Songs like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “Love Me Do,” and “I Saw Her Standing Here” are a couple of the boyish love songs from The Beatles’ early days. The teenage boys in the 60s couldn’t stand the fact that their girlfriends were obsessing over four attractive British lads. Only did people other than girls start loving The Beatles after they grew up with their music. To me, that doesn’t sound very different…it sounds exactly like my life right now; my boyfriend hates it when I talk about how cute Harry Styles from One Direction is.
At the end of the day, The Beatles is a boy band. And One Direction is a boy band. It’s a fact that everyone has to live with.