The Who - Who's Next


Merry Christmas, everybody. A lot of things happening behind the scenes around here, so I've been quite quiet in the album review department. Well, guess who showed up. No, not the Guess Who, just The Who, and their 5th album, Who's Next. 

The title, of course, is a double entendre. On one hand, it's just a regular old single-disc studio album. On the other hand, the cover art implies they all just took a piss on that 2001 inspired monolith in the middle of a slag field. 

After Tommy, Townsend was working on another massive multimedia distopian rock opera called Lifehouse, but they eventually dropped it and let Glyn Johns pick whatever songs and arrange it how he liked. The end result is widely considered The Who's best album, and one of the best in general. No argue from me, it's a Random Crap album about living life. All the songs are great, i'm sure you've already heard most of them a thousand times, but they sound completely coherent from start to finish with those iconic arpeggiated synth-organ bookends. Sure you could totally just not like 70s Hard Rock, or The Who in particular, but we listen to The Album around here, and as an album about the cultural importance of Rock and Roll (which is really Pete Townsend's and The Who's entire artistic MO), you could do it different, but never better.

So, happy whatever day it is for you. I can't talk too much about what's next other than to say there's some monumental changes in the works, but i can at least coincidentally elaborate on Who's Next. Enjoy.

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