I Am a Crotchety Old Fuck

My niece has been blathering to me for weeks now about her squad of squads One Direction - one car trip in particular meant my being pummeled by her skipping from track to track on their album, excitedly pointing out "this is Nick!  Now it's Zack!!!" or whatever their names are, all while I nod my head and act like I'm listening. Of course I roll my eyes when she implores "you gotta listen to the woooooooooords!!!!" but hey, we all were 11 years old once. I'm sure I bugged someone from another generation about how important Duran Duran in 1983 were too. I get it: I'll be the old guy in the parking lot reading USA Today, waiting for the One Direction concert to end so I can drive her and all her friends home afterwards.

However, she flew too close to the sun by telling me that One Direction will make people forget The Beatles. Please. I don't wanna be Mr. Old Guy Curmudgeon, but it was George Martin himself who once said "Children continue to rediscover the music, generation after generation. It’s like saying why is Gershwin timeless? Their music is part of history, it will last forever.” The Beatles not only wrote and performed their own music, but completely changed the process and potential of pop music while dictating culture itself. I doubt the young fellows from One Direction will be able to say the same fifty years from now, for two reasons:

1) So far, it's hard to believe they'll be anything but teenyboppers. Yes, the same was once said about The Beatles, albeit proven wrong:

The greatest instance of "teenyboppers" would hafta be when the Beatles first came to America 45 years ago next month. 12 year-old girls running through the streets, screaming their lungs out and pissing themselves (literally.) Passing out at concerts, writing "I LOVE PAUL" all over their titties, whatever. Of course any grown man seeing this would scoff at how silly the girls were acting, and assume that after about 3 months The Beatles would go away, replaced by a newer fad and never heard from again. Not a crazy thing to think if you were the average 35 year-old guy at the time.

But what they didn't know was of course the Beatles WEREN'T fly-by-night pretty boys merely shaking their moptops to girls. They had spent years and years playing together for 7 hours a night in clubs throughout Germany and England, and had honed their craft to the point of being actual musicians. So even though the crowds were acting like lunatics, the Beatles themselves were very capable, and in fact spent the next couple of years confounding the world as they got EVEN BETTER by leaps and bounds.

and

2) While seemingly wanting to draw a line from themselves to The Beatles vis shots like this in their videos

THE CHORUS OF THEIR BIG SONG IS AN EXACT RIPOFF OF THAT FUCKING UBIQUITOUS SHITTY SONG FROM I WANT IT THAT WAY, by the Backstreet Boys!!

I mean for fuck's sake - if you wanna be great, rip off The Beatles. But don't ape the fucking Backstreet Boys and then ask me to take you seriously. I mean, come the fuck on already.