211. The Who - Who's Next (1971)




















Track Listing

1. Baba O'Riley
2. Bargain
3. Love Ain't For Keeping
4. My Wife
5. The song is over
6. Getting in tune
7. Going Mobile
8. Behind Blue Eyes
9. Won't Get Fooled Again

Review

Finally The Who make an album worthy of joining the Hall of my Creative Zen, yes because iPods are for fashionistas who care nothing about sound! Yes, that's you Adam! Leaving that aside, this album is truly great, not only because it has the theme tunes to two of the CSI series, which I don't care for that much, but because The Who mix their brand of hard rock with pretty nifty synths to create their best album.

The album is composed of 9 tracks, all of them pretty brilliant. The album fortunately eschews concept, something that fascinated The Who, but which they never did to any great degree of success, and focuses on putting out great songs. The Who were always able to make great tracks while loosing themselves in high concepts which ruined their albums. Here they get it right finally.

Also, the sound is great. The songs are heavy, funny and synthy. It really is a great album the songs sound fresh and exciting and you can't help but whish that all their career had been like it. So buy it now at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Baba O'Reilly
2. Won't Get Fooled Again
3. Bargain
4. Behind Blue Eyes

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

* "Baba O'Riley" is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Teenage Wasteland", which is, however, the title of Townshend's original demo, as included in The Lifehouse Chronicles box set.

* "My Wife", composed and sung by bassist John Entwistle, became a concert standard. Entwistle wrote the song in his head while taking a walk in the woods with his dog after getting into an argument with his wife. She found the lyrics quite humorous, and at one point even suggested she come onstage during a Who concert performance with a rolling pin and chase the band members around the stage..

* Further remasters (such as the Deluxe Edition) have contained the entire live concert at the Young Vic Theatre, and the original album (without the extra tracks) has been mastered at half speed and released on 250g virgin (unrecycled) vinyl.

* "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley" have been used as the theme songs for CSI: Miami and CSI: NY, respectively.

* Baba O'Riley appeared in episode 14, season 1 ( "Control" ) of House

* "Won't Get Fooled Again" also formed part of The Who's July 2, 2005 Live8 line-up; they performed in Hyde Park, London to over two hundred thousand cheering onlookers.

* Blue Man Group covered "Baba O'Riley" on their 2003 Complex Rock Tour with Tracy Bonham singing lead & playing violin. They repeated this on their 2006 "How To Be A Megastar 2.0" tour.

* Until the advent of democracy in South Korea in the early 1990s, "Won't Get Fooled Again" was banned and pressings of Who's Next omitted the song.

* Baba O'Riley was used by Cisco in their networking commercial showing people from various parts of the world in 2006.

Baba O'Reilly: