Guard your teen girls! The British are coming!

Too late. They are already here. In the form of the British boy band One Direction, who just became the first UK pop group to debut at number one on Billboard's U.S. album chart. (The previous highest UK entry, at #6? The Spice Girls. So much for The Beatles and The Who -- to which my 13-year-old would say, "Who?" Sigh.)

My daughter, the aforementioned 13-year-old, has actually been a fan of One Direction for quite some time now, having heard them on her Internet radio months ago (streamed from some London station). But I only recently heard the Simon Cowell-created UK boy band (hey, hey, we're the Monkees), when they performed on The TODAY Show. (You want to talk March Madness? Check out that link -- and the THOUSANDS of screaming adolescent females who played hooky from school to see those mop tops.)

For those of you who haven't heard of One Direction, here are two of their more popular songs, "What Makes You Beautiful"...



and "One Thing" (a knowing wink to that other fabricated boy band, the Monkees)...



I actually like both songs, in a oh-look-another-boy-band-and-they're-British-how-cute kind of way.

Btw, One Direction's videos have received over 204 million views on YouTube, and their debut album, Up All Night, sold 176,000 copies in its first week. (Simon Cowell is laughing all the way to the bank.)

Any thoughts on the UK's latest export? Leave a comment.