I was watching The Brits with the rest of the world last Wednesday, and I was left fuming that One Direction got an award for Global Success. I took to Twitter and vented, and I found out that actually, I had a lot of people who shared my anguish. All the way through The Brits, the 1D boys were the main attraction with James Corden hanging around their table, with Taylor Swift singing “Knew you were Trouble” which was “about” Harry, the constant hype about their performance, and due to them losing out on their only nominated gong to Mumford & Sons, I felt like The Brits literally made up an award to keep the five boys happy. I understand awards have to start at some time, and there always be the first winner, but to me it seemed a little bit of a coincidence.

Don’t get me wrong, 1D are living the dream. They individually auditioned for X Factor as soloists, and got put together and ended up doing reallllly well. We cannot take that away from them, they can sing, sure, they are cute, and sure, they are successful. But what I cannot stand is the fact that they are a brand. They are yet another band that has been chewed up by the machine that is “Simon Cowell”, regurgitated at huge volumes and have walked off into the sunset like a scene from any old Western.

Again, I sound jealous. Maybe I am. I don’t want people to think I hate the boys themselves, of course I don’t. If I was in their (famous) shoes, I would obviously lap up the attention, buy things I couldn’t afford before, and sing. They are doing everything right. I just think what gets to me the most is when people, (even though I am pretty sure they are aliens) are COMPARING them to The Beatles. Sure, everyone has their own opinion, but I cannot let this one slide.

You see, they are a pretty boyband. A boyband who use their good looks to make under-age girls crush on them, and exclaim that they love them. They are a boyband who do not write their songs, or play their own instruments. The Beatles were also the squeaky-clean good looking boyband, but they did write their songs and played their own instruments. This is the difference. 1D are a boybrand and The Beatles were a Boyband. They were musicians who understood music and created some beautiful music. 1D did a song called “Little Things” in a way that people got confused and thought they wrote this song about the little things they love about a girl, and their video shows them playing guitars. I cannot fault the guitar playing, even though it is easy to fake playing one, but the song was actually written by Ed Sheeran, a guy who yet again is a musician.

Sure, 1D have sold many, many records, but with technology nowadays, all you have to do is click a button and it is all yours. With The Beatles, you would have to go to a shop and purchase the CD or record. It is more accessible for people now to just download it straight to their iPods, which is a great piece of technology, but it is not a fair comparison.

I am sure I am going to get some backlash here, but at the end of the day, we are allowed opinions. I am not hating on these 5 guys who had a dream, but I am just going to say that I don’t care. I will only start to believe that they are better than The Beatles when they outsell the 2,303,500,000 records (that’s in billions by the way). Plus the 2.8 million singles and the 585,000 albums sold on iTunes to date. Or even if one album has the success SGT Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band had with it being in the chart for 175 weeks with 15 of those being spent in numero 1 place.

Good luck to the guys and hope they don’t turn out like most of the other boybands out there, when one leaves, or one goes to rehab etc. I don’t mind you existing, I don’t mind you making music, just please, can people stop comparing the students to the masters.