The songwriter who penned One Direction's new track 'Steal My Girl' has spoken out against claims that suggest he plagiarised it from both New Found Glory's 'It's Not Your Fault' and Journey's 'Faithfully'. 

Earlier this week, Paramore's Hayley Williams and her boyfriend, New Found Glory's Chad Gilbert, took to Twitter to tell the world that it sounds very much like the cut was copied for the boyband's new offering and Williams wrote:

"Beginning of that new 1D song couldn't sound any more like the beginning of @newfoundglory's 'it's not your fault'. I realise that I'm gonna get hate from a very large fanbase for that. But really, it has more to do w/ whoever pitched or cowrote the song. Anyway, more pressing & positive matters to deal w/."  

Julian Bunetta, the co-writer behind 'Steal My Girl', has now told MTV that any similarities to other songs are entirely coincidental and that he thinks, if anything, it sounds more like 'Faithfully' by classic rock outfit, Journey: 

"When we sat down and played the piano lick, nobody had any references in their head about what they wanted to write or anything and then I saw all the things (comments) about that (Journey song). At the end of the day, the lyric and the melody have nothing to do with any other song that I have ever heard."

He continued: "Sometimes there's only so many things you can do with a piano at that tempo. There is an age-old saying that great minds think alike so, naturally, sometimes people are going to write on the same inspirational wave lengths and come up with things that are similar and it wasn't anyone's intention to do that at all... But at least we are being compared to a classic song and not a s**ty song, so that's a compliment."

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Listen to 'Steal My Girl' along with 'It's Not Your Fault' and 'Faithfully' below: