David M. Benett/Getty Images/Steve Granitz/WireImageYou may be completely shocked by this (emphasis on "may be"), but Tom Meighan, frontman of British rock band Kasabian, is not a One Direction fan. He's not too sweet on the Spice Girls, either.
The 34-year-old singer threw major shade at the popular boy band at the recent 2015 NME Awards in London, where his group won Best British Band and Best Album for their 2014 record, 48:13, which contains the single "Eez-eh."
"They're f--king millionaires but they're five no-ones who won the lottery," he told the The Sun about One Direction, according to NME.com and Yahoo!'s U.K. celebrity news site. "They're massive, but they're a product, we're not. They're like shampoo. You buy it to put in your hair and wash it out, like the Spice Girls."
"Thing is, they'll all get angry with each other, fall out and do too many drugs," Yahoo! quoted him as telling the U.K. newspaper. "They'll wanna be f--king arty and do something clever and they'll break up."
One Direction, a British and Irish boy band made up of singers Zayn Malik, 22, Louis Tomlinson, 23, Liam Payne, 21, Harry Styles, 21, and Niall Horan, 21, and members of the popular '90s female pop group have not commented.
The Spice Girls, made up of Victoria Beckham, 40, Melanie Brown, 39, Geri Halliwell, 42, Emma Bunton, 39, and Melanie Chisholm, 41, have not performed together regularly for years, although they did reunite in 2012 for a special performance at the 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony.
Both groups were put together as a result of open auditions. One Direction was formed on Simon Cowell's U.K. singing competition series The X Factor in 2010 after the five auditioned separately. They came in third place and later signed with his record label, Syco. The Spice Girls were formed in 1994 after its members answered a newspaper ad and were years later managed by Simon Fuller, creator of American Idol, the show that made Cowell famous in the United States.
Also, both groups have achieved enormous international success. The Spice Girls, known for hit singles such as "Wannabe" and "Spice Up Your Life," have sold more than 80 million records. One Direction, known for popular songs "Story of My Life" and "What Makes You Beautiful"," have sold more than 50 million records and currently rank No. 7 on Forbes's 2014 list of the world's highest-paid musicians with an estimated $75 million in annual earnings, above Sir Paul McCartney ($71 million), Calvin Harris ($66 million) and country singer Toby Keith ($65 million).
One Direction's fan base is so large and loyal that when Horan was earlier this month linked romantically to a 21-year-old college student, she received death threats from several of them on social media.
Both groups were not nominated for NME Awards this year. The annual ceremony, whose nominees and winners are chosen by readers of the magazine New Music Express, honors mostly rock artists and also features several non-music categories.
"We're very humble, very privileged and very proud to win this award because we've been together a long f--king time, since we were 16 years old," Meighan said onstage as the band accepted the award for Best British Band.
However, One Direction and the Spice Girls have received NME Awards in the past. The ceremony also includes "honors" that actually throw shade. In 2012 and 2013, 1D was dubbed "Worst Band," and in 2013 and 2014 Styles was given the award for Villain of the Year. In 1997, the Spice Girls "won" Worst Single for "Wannabe."
The NME Award statuette resembles a hand giving the middle finger.