The Wanted & One Direction Cover 'Billboard'

With The Wanted's "Glad You Came" currently at #3 on the Hot 100 and One Direction's Up All Night topping last week's Top 200 album chart, Billboard has inevitably slapped the UK boy band's on dueling covers of the publication. (The Wanted's debut US LP is out on April 24.)

It's been over 10 years since boy bands had the charts looking like a total sausage fest, and wise old sage Simon Cowell piped up on the resurgence of pop in Billboard's cover story:

"It's a track-oriented chart at the moment. When we used to put records out years ago, two singles was the norm, three singles was a lot. And you have these solo artists now who could be, with collaborations, putting out seven or eight singles a year. [Even if] you go back to the Motown days, every time, it always comes back to 12 o'clock. It felt like that time again."

Cowell, of course, manages One Direction, while Justin Bieber's manager Scooter Braun is in charge of The Wanted. (What happened to Jayne Collins?)