One Direction Bigger Than The Beatles?

One Direction will make music history if their debut album Up All Night reaches No. 1 in the United States next week. The boy-band -put together by Simon Cowell on the Uk X Factor - need to sell 180,000 copies of the record to become the first Brit band to top the Billboard Albums Chart with a debut.

The success has brought comparisons with the Beatles, but front-man Harry Styles, 18, played down the hype, telling the UK's Daily Mirror, "That seems ridiculous to us, because they were such icons.But we watched a film of their first US trip and there were similarities.We're as close as them despite not being together long". When pushed on whether One Direction's music could be compared to the Fab Four's, Styles said, "Our music is pop music but kind of heavy guitar driven. It's been said it's like Pink in a boy-band". Adele finally lost the top spot on the Billboard Chart this week to Bruce Springsteen, though it could be a short-stay at No.1 for The Boss if the British group sell the required amount of albums. Billboard's director of charts Keith Caulfield spoke of the battle to Mtv News, saying, "There didn't seem to be much hype until all of a sudden it sort of exploded.The album should do somewhere in the range of 160,000 to 180,000, that's what we're projecting right now. It's a little hard to gauge just because they're so youth-appealing and because they're basically a boy band, it's hard to project how consumers will react to the album".