He might dress himself like one of the Rolling Stones (or, as if all of the Rolling Stones had a punch-up in Jamie Hince’s closet) but Harry Styles has gone and compared his band to The Beatles. In a repeat of John Lennon’s ‘We’re bigger than Jesus’ comment, the One Direction poplet has said that his band is bigger than The Beatles.
He explained that he could identify when he watched footage of the Fab Four arriving at JFK airport in New York in 1964. ‘It really was like us. Stepping off the plane, the girls, the madness, it was exactly the same as when we got there – just 50 years earlier,’ he told Top of the Pops magazine. ‘But none of us think we’re in the same league as them music-wise. We’d be total fools if we did. Fame-wise it’s probably even bigger, but we don’t stand anywhere near them in terms of music.’
Whilst his songwriters – including McFly, Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody and Ed Sheeran – might not love that, no doubt Simon Cowell is gleefully rubbing his freshly-waxed hands together in some executive boardroom somewhere because, let's face it, The Beatles caused a stir.
And even though fans seem that much more fan-girly these days - with all the tattoos of One Direction's names and faces, do we really see people 50 years down the line getting their own One Direction tattoos? And take a look at the videos below for a bit of a comparison. Sorry, Directioners, but though you are very dedicated to the boys, you're not a patch on the obssessive fans at the height of Beatlemania. Maybe it's an indictment of how today's teens would rather spend their time at a computer screen tweeting Harry et al about dead pets than climbing the walls of an airport terminal.
The Beatles arriving at JFK airport in 1964
** One Direction arriving at LAX airport in 2013 (they've got to turn up at some point, right?)**
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Pictures: Corbis, Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.