Hayley Williams Accuses One Direction Of Ripping Off New Found Glory Riff That Rips Off Journey

Hayley Williams Accuses One Direction Of Ripping Off New Found Glory Riff That Rips Off Journey

To the ears of Paramore’s Hayley Williams, the opening piano riff on One Direction’s new single “Steal My Girl” so smacked of New Found Glory’s 2006 single “It’s Not Your Fault” that a Twitter dismissal was in order. Williams, who has been dating New Found Glory singer Chad Gilbert since 2008 (that’s them together at the 2010 People’s Choice Awards in the photo above), disparagingly tweeted the comparison yesterday with the help of a tea-sipping Kermit The Frog:

There’s certainly a similarity there. Thing is, the entire history of pop music is built on borrowing riffs and altering them for your own means, something both 1D and NFG are guilty of. As Spin kindly points out, both “Steal My Girl” and “It’s Not Your Fault” owe a heavy debt to the riff from Journey’s smash-hit power ballad “Faithfully.” Compare the three tunes below.

BTW, as noted in a recent Week In Pop column, One Direction’s previous single “Fireproof” is fire — and while we’re at it, so is Paramore’s whole discography, which as of yet does not include a song built on the piano riff from “Faithfully.”

[Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images.]

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