May 8, 2024

Hayley Williams Faces The Wrath Of One Direction Fans — And Lives

Looking for a reason to stay on the One Direction fandom’s good side? Here it is, courtesy of Hayley Williams, Chad Gilbert and so many tweets.

On Monday (September 29), the New Found Glory guitarist tweeted that the piano work in 1D’s “Steal My Girl”

…sounded eerily similar to NFG’s own “It’s Not Your Fault.”

He then suggested that he should “get a cut” of the profits, although common sense should tell you he was joking.

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Nonetheless, excuse me while I go scream “DON’T GO UP THOSE STAIRS” at my computer screen because this just wasn’t going to end well.

The Paramore frontwoman, who has been dating Gilbert since 2008, chimed in on the recently released Four single, writing: “Beginning of that new 1D song couldn’t sound any more like the beginning of @newfoundglory’s ‘its not your fault.’”

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She even threw in that “But that’s none of my business” meme of Kermit sipping tea to hammer home the point that shade had been thrown — even if said “shade” wouldn’t really meet the textbook definition of the word as laid out in “Paris Is Burning.” We can argue that point of semantics later, but right now I need to cover my eyes because I know what’s about to happen.

Almost immediately, a number of One Direction fans descended upon Chad and Hayley to counter their tweets. Some of the backlash was pretty gross and entry-level hate-tweeting (the community members at ONTD rounded up some of the worst examples right here in the comments section).

Still other Directioners argued that 1D’s “Steal My Girl” didn’t rip off New Found Glory’s “It’s Not Your Fault” any more than NFG ripped off Journey’s “Faithfully” — a point also argued by Andrew Unterberger at Spin.

One of the song’s co-writers, Julian Bunetta, told MTV News on Tuesday that any similarities between “Steal My Girl” and the Journey classic were totally unintentional. “When we sat down and played the piano lick, nobody had any references in their head about what they wanted to write.” He added, “But at least we are being compared to a classic song and not a sh—tty song, so that’s a compliment.”

After a little back and forth with some more “One D’z nuts fans,” Gilbert decided that his Twitter mentions had had enough. “Wow did not realize this was gonna be a story,” he tweeted Monday afternoon. “My original tweet was a joke anyway. Music influences music. No one cares.”

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Williams probably wasn’t too fazed, either. Back in April, she tangled with Beliebers after accusing Justin Bieber of ripping off some Paramore fan art for his “We Were Born For This” song art on SoundCloud. What’s a couple bajillion Directioners after that?

Now that some time has passed, it looks like all parties involved have returned to their regularly scheduled activities: Hayley’s celebrating the five-year anniversary of Paramore’s Brand New Eyes, Chad’s getting hyped for NFG’s next album and upcoming Glamour Kills Tour and the Directioners are making stuff like “#LiamTellUsHowNiallsArmpitsSmell” trend on Twitter. Everything’s back to normal.

And with that, the dust has settled. It looks like we’re all safe…for now.

Bad at filling out bios seeks same.

About the author  ⁄ John Walker

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