Best Song Ever

''Todd plays "Best Song Ever" on the piano

ONE DIRECTION - BEST SONG EVER A pop song review

Todd: One Direction.


 * Video for "Kiss You"
 * Zayn: Oh, I just wanna take you anywhere that you like

Todd (VO): I loathe this band, I think I've made that clear. But see, here's the thing. If I want to pretend they don't exist, I can totally do that, 'cause the only people who generally care about teen idols are teenage girls, and otherwise, they're generally very easy to ignore.

Todd: Especially for me because I haven't actually listened to any new music in ten years.


 * Clip of "One Thing"

Todd (VO): But for the past month or so, pretending that I live in a One Directionless world has not worked for me because I've been trying to keep up with the summer movie season and all, so...

Todd: ...I keep getting reminded that this is happening.


 * Clip of One Direction: This Is Us TV spot ''
 * Speaker: On August 30th, make a date with Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry and Louis. One Direction: This Is Us.

Todd (VO): Why am I seeing ads for this?

Todd: I ask you, why does someone apparently think that because I bought a ticket to [poster of...] Elysium


 * Clips from movie

Todd (VO): I might also be interested in the badly edited amateur footage of five teenage boys pretending to act natural?

Todd: And the thing is, I don't even dislike any of them as people or...

Todd (VO): ...as singers or as artists, even, whathaveyou. It's just that the people who write their songs for them, make them seem so intensely creepy with how they make these guys directly exploit their teenage fanbases deepest insecurities, which is what makes me so nervous about them. They need to be stopped.

Todd: And they don't have any competition. Like, in the 90s, we had [EW image of 'N Sync vs. Backstreet Boys, followed by brief clips of Backstreet Boys - "Larger than Life" and 'N Sync - "Pop"] the boy band wars, which was a terrible time for music, but ultimately, both sides ended up destroyed. I choose to liken it to World War II.


 * ''Clip of World War II documentary

Todd (VO): Both Nazism and Stalinism threatened the free world as we know it, but ended up fighting each other, leaving one defeated and the other unable to do more than burn itself out trying to keep up over the next few decades. Now I do...

Todd: ...realize that I can say controversial things sometimes, but I think we can all agree, comparing the Backstreet Boys to Hitler is entirely accurate and proportional.

But One Direction has no rivals; they've destroyed them all.


 * Clip of Justin Bieber - "Beauty and a Beat"

Todd (VO): I guess there's still Justin Bieber, but there's still only one of him and five of them. That's some asymmetrical warfare.

Todd: We're running out of options. Right now, I'm leaning towards quarantining the entire island [poster of...] 28 Weeks Later style. In any case, I am not gonna to go see their movie. (Unless I am.) But in lieu of that, there's also their big soundtrack song. Whoopee. It is entitled, [single cover] "Best Song Ever".

Seriously? The worst act in pop music, an act who hasn't released a song that wasn't utterly loathsome, their next single is called "Best Song Ever". [pause] Well, I guess the low-hanging fruit is there for a reason. Let's take a listen.

Transcript in progress