The Who
Who's Next

Who's Next, brutally speaking, is born as a convenience album.

1971: after the stellar success of Tommy, Pete Townshend, guitarist and songwriter as well as the brain of the group, conceives the idea of another rock-opera: Lifehouse. Lifehouse was supposed to be a project that mixed music (played live by The Who themselves) and theater.
Unfortunately, the project, very innovative and ambitious for that time, turned out to be a total failure. However, the band found it unfortunate to throw away the material written and already recorded both in the studio and live. So the songs from "Lifehouse" were released on an album titled "Who's Next".
Ironically, the album turned out to be the best album ever conceived by Townshend; a high-level album, with all the right elements to be liked and to become THE Who album.

"Who's Next" stands out from all of The Who's other albums, not only for a Townshend enormously enlightened, but also for Daltrey's explosive voice, much improved compared to early appearances; for the introduction of the synthesizer (use which would be massively resumed in "Who Are You"), and for a well-chosen guest like the pianist Nick Hopkins, who gives us part of his talent in "My Wife" and "The Song Is Over".

Except for the opening and ending track ("Baba O'Riley", a dedication to Meher Baba - preacher of peace of whom Townshend was a disciple - and musician Terry Riley, and "Won't Get Fooled Again", a manifesto song for The Who, as well as an anthem of their generation, a sort of precursor to the spirit that would later energize the punk generation), the album mostly consists of love songs.
It alternates with dignity delightful semi-acoustic ballads like "Love Ain't For Keeping", "Behind Blue Eyes" (surely one of the most beautiful ballads ever written: Daltrey's voice is astonishing, starting delicately, painfully, wrapped in a beautiful acoustic arpeggio and then bursting into a rhythmic and energetic performance) to true rock anthems like "Bargain" or "Going Mobile".

The album is so well constructed that it manages to transport you out of reality to immerse you in a typical sixties atmosphere along with a lost and rebellious generation. Who's Next is simply an album with nine pieces that have been masterful in the history of music.