#28 Who's Next - The Who

Clearly the best song on this album is "Won't Get Fooled Again" where band member Pete Townshend expresses the idea that the 1960s revolution doesn't really change anything at all, and the "new boss" is the same as the "old boss" in the final line of the song.  All the hippies had their chance and led a decent revolution, but in the end you might as well play the guitar, because we'll all be fooled again.

and he was right.

Needless to say, I think he was spot on.

The whole album is beautifully done.  "Getting in Tune" made me really happy.  It was very fortunate for them that they were right in tune, otherwise they could have nicknamed the song "ironic" even though that's already been taken by someone who doesn't know what irony is.  but maybe that's what made the song ironic.  who knows.  I digress.  I'll rip her a new one when I get to her album.

It dawned on me for the first time since I began this project, that we just don't have anyone who makes music like this anymore.  Like any of the albums I've been immersed in.  At least they don't get famous and aren't in the spotlight if they do.  I think that's a huge problem.  These songs are intelligent, fun to listen to, beautifully put together, well thought out, and by the end of the album you're trying to piece together what it all meant, what it means to me, what it will mean in the future and what creative holy spirit possessed this band to work tirelessly over it.  sans autotune.

The music of my generation is "good" if you can have sex to it in a club or at 3 am.  Lady Gaga, you can f*ck to that.  She's great in her own creative/imaginative way, and contrary to popular assumptions, she can play the instruments and she can sing like she invented vocal chords, but who else of my generation can do such a thing?  Lady Gaga just happened to also write music people can f*ck to which is why she's famous.

All of it, listen to a top 20 chart.  You can reproduce to all of that shit.  It's the only thing that sells today.  Most of those people are created in a music laboratory and then their voices are autotuned.  but nobody cares, because it's music you can f*ck to.  Jesus, I'm starting to sound like one of "those people."  I need to pull the needle full of The Who out of my veins.  Or unplug myself from my iPod.

The Who won't put you in the mood to do it, but they will rock a part of your soul that needs to be awakened if it hasn't already been.

Who's Next was released in 1971

What the Gods have to say about that:

Pete Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown when his planned follow-up to the rock operaTommy, the ambitious, theatrical Lifehouse, fell apart. He was also left with an extraordinary cache of songs that the Who pruned down and honed to a beefy sheen on what became their best studio album, Who's Next. "Behind Blue Eyes," "Going Mobile" and "Bargain" all beam with epic majesty, often spiked with synthesizers — especially "Baba O'Riley," which Townshend partly named after avant-garde composer Terry Riley. "I like synthesizers," Townshend said, "because they bring into my hands things that aren't in my hands: the sound of the orchestra, French horns, strings. . . . You press a switch and it plays it back at double speed."