Listen: Did One Direction Rip Off The Clash?

Here’s a bit of a mellon scratcher to wrap up your Monday arvo. Following the recent unveiling of their latest video effort, One Direction have received backlash after fans began commenting on the resemblance Live While We’re Young has to The Clash’s 1981 masterpiece Should I Stay Or Should I Go.

Now, the first question that might pop into your head is ‘why would musicians as talented and virtuous as One Direction feel the need to copy another band’s work?’ Well, people all over the world have been thinking the same, heading to YouTube in droves to compare the two. Music Feeds did the hard work for you (and Ninemsn did the hard work for us) and you can examine both tracks below.

The issue lies in the guitar chords, the strumming pattern and the almost exact usage of palm muting. You don’t even need to hear The Clash hit to remember how that one goes. This begs another question…surely someone, somewhere along the line of command that falls between One Direction and their actual music would have heard the tune and thought ‘…wait a minute’. Just saying.

So check it out below; what do you guys think?

http://youtu.be/GqH21LEmfbQ

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