The Who: 40 most essential songs

In need of a quick single while in the thick of making their magnum opus Tommy, the Who knocked out “Magic Bus,” an overt tribute to the shave-and-a-haircut rhythms of Bo Diddley. There’s not much to “Magic Bus” but it’s not quite as simple as it appears either: Pete Townshend propels the whole thing by bashing away on an acoustic guitar, allowing Keith Moon to run ramshod on the drums, a dynamic that gives the single a real kick. It’s not just a record, either: the call-and-response structure allowed it to become a vibrant set piece in the Who’s live set.

The final song on the flawed, fascinating Face Dances finds Pete Townshend coming to the conclusion that “This is no social crisis, just another tricky day for you.” That measure of maturity can’t be felt elsewhere on Face Dances but “Another Tricky Day” crackles with humor and self-awareness, each given a bright pulse by a Who who were attempting to navigate the waters churned up by new wave.

One of the purest displays of British whimsy in the Who’s catalog, “Happy Jack” is a quick character sketch of an eccentric who lives on the Isle of Man. Pete Townshend doesn’t give Happy Jack much detail, preferring to have the Who fill in the blanks by alternating a half-time verse with a cathartic chorus, coloring it all with high vocal harmonies. Those vivid bursts of color give “Happy Jack” a genuine pulse, one that was still evident in the ferocious live renditions the Who played through the early 1970s.

The great failed Who single, “Dogs” arrived in 1968, positioned somewhere between “I Can See For Miles” and “Magic Bus.” It never troubled the American charts for a very good reason: it’s as self-consciously British as the Small Faces’ “Lazy Sunday,” a celebration of dog racing and lager delivered in exaggerated accents. The very British affectations didn’t make for much of a hit in the UK in ’68 but years later, it’s hard not to see “Dogs” as the blueprint for a good portion of Britpop; it’s hard to imagine Blur’s “Parklife” without it.

Roger Daltrey wrote only a handful of songs for the Who, most arriving in the mid-1960s when the band’s managers were pushing the four members to contribute original material so they could take home additional publishing royalties. That scheme petered out quickly, losing steam after the uneven A Quick One but Daltrey and co-writer Dave Langston contributed a sterling pop tune to The Who Sell Out sessions with “Early Morning Cold Taxi.” As bright and bracing as a brisk morning, the song is as crisp as any other song on The Who Sell Out but it was left unreleased until the album’s CD expansion in the 1990s, at which time it entered the canon as one of the Who’s lost gems.

The flip side of “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “I Don’t Even Know Myself” is a bit of soul-searching from Pete Townshend. Shrugging off the mantle of teenage guru, Townshend proclaims “Don’t pretend that you know me, ’cause I don’t even know myself,” an assessment that seems defiant in the hands of Roger Daltrey but is softened considerably by the bridge, where the Who mimic a country-western ramble. The aesthetic jumble helps give the song resonance: the whiplash musical changes and countering vocal approaches suggest the band is still figuring themselves out.

“Slip Kid” kicks off the self-questioning The Who By Numbers on a note of false bravado: all big beats, heavy hooks, and Roger Daltrey bluster, it seems as if the Who is operating from a position of strength. Underneath that clamor, there are hints of unrest—the doubt that soon comes to the forefront elsewhere on the album—but here, it acts as light and shade on the band’s most infectious rocker of the mid-1970s.

The concluding song on the first side of Who’s Next, “The Song Is Over” is one of the first Who songs to take full advantage of the complementary vocal styles of Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey. In his quivering, tender voice, Townshend sings the earnest verses and bridge, while Daltrey takes over the choruses, ushering out the song with a snippet of “Pure And Easy,” a song the group cut from Who’s Next. The blend of introspection and exuberance is key not only to the song’s appeal but that of the Who themselves.

“Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand” is where the Who’s brilliant concept album The Who Sell Out kicks in—the song that arrives after the faux commercial for Heinz Baked Beans, the song that suggests a frothy hit to fit their pirate radio concept. All jangling guitars and candied vocal harmonies, it’s the Who’s version of a bubblegum pop hit circa 1967, a clever concept delivered with style and verve.

Intended as the sequel to “My Generation” but getting lost in the muck of litigation with the group’s original producer Shel Talmy, “Circles (Instant Party)“ wound up as a B-side but snuck out on other releases under slightly different names—aka, “Instant Party (Circles)”—and variations and mixes. The uncertain, ever-changing nature of its release suits how the song itself moves in circles, the hooks and melodies intertwining in an almost hypnotic fashion.

“Bargain” is the song that telegraphs how far the Who have come since Tommy. Any lingering sense of precious pop-art is obliterated by the heavy thunder producer Glyn Johns helps articulate here. The crunching power chords of Pete Townshend and the ominous rumble of John Entwistle’s bass give Roger Daltrey’s screams gravitas; the band, as a whole, sounds hungry and desperate.

A mainstay of the Who’s live sets of the early 1970s, “Naked Eye” was attempted early in the sessions that became Who’s Next but left unreleased until the compilation Odds And Sods in 1974. There was always a sense that Pete Townshend felt “Naked Eye” never reached its potential—he wrote “This was never released because we always hoped we would get a good live version one day”—but the passage of time makes the song’s melodrama seem all the more powerful. By transitioning seamlessly between segments showcasing Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, “Naked Eye” seems fluid and uncertain: it gives the sense that it could explode at any moment, which is why it always seemed to come alive in concert.

Released as a standalone single months after Who’s Next, “Let’s See Action” is a holdover, one of the songs from the rejected Lifehouse that the Who finished during the session for Who’s Next. Pete Townshend designed the song as a call to arms, rallying his audience together to move forward. To that end, it almost stands as a hopeful counterpoint to the apathy of “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” its positivity reflected in its nimble rhythms and exuberant chorus.

One of the highlights on the Who’s intended farewell album It’s Hard, “Athena” conveys the urgent rush of a new love. Barreling forward at a rapid clip, “Athena” is also overloaded with florid declarations of love—words that would seem too purple if delivered by Pete Townshend but Roger Daltrey’s burly singing brings them down to earth, giving the song the muscle it needs.

The two brothers in “Tattoo” are on a quest to figure out “what makes a man a man,” arriving at the conclusion that it’s not brains, brawn, or appearance, it’s permanent ink etched in your skin. Pete Townshend’s exploration of the fragile boundaries of male ego alternates between high harmonies and pompous pre-choruses, a musical combination that skewers conventional notions of masculinity as effectively as his clever words.

Perhaps the song that illustrates the greatest distance between a Pete Townshend lyric and Roger Daltrey performance, “You Better You Bet” belongs to a clutch of self-loathing middle-aged examinations written by Townshend, but you’d never know that listening to Daltrey sing the number. Daltrey belts the number out, treating the chorus as a boast, not a nervous question, a decision that fundamentally changes the song. That blend of intentions can be fascinating but, in some ways, latter-day live renditions featuring a humbled Daltrey convey the meaning of the song better than the original hit.

The moment in Tommy where the titular character experiences a spiritual revelation, an evolution that puts him in the position of being a cult leader. The ramifications of that change are explored later in the rock opera, leaving “I’m Free” to stand as an earned moment of liberation, propelled by its punchy guitar chords and Roger Daltrey’s beatific vocals.

Recorded the same day as “Join Together,” “Relay” shares some surface similarities to its cousin: it’s a standalone single where an insistent synth-loop propels the band as much as Keith Moon’s drums. Where “Join Together” implores listeners to seek communion with the band, “Relay” encourages listeners to break away: its power relies on what’s transferred between two people, not what’s shared.

Quadrophenia, Pete Townshend’s second successful rock opera, romanticizes adolescent angst through the prism of a celebration of mod, the British scene that was instrumental in the rise of the Who in the 1960s. “The Real Me” acts as a fanfare for Quadrophenia, establishing how the protagonist feels unseen by his family, his girlfriend, his shrink—anybody he meets, really. Roger Daltrey captures his anger at this confusion while the Who barrels forth, their aggression intensifying the desperation at the heart of the song.

Matching “My Generation” as the Who’s highest-charting single in Britain—it reached number two in 1966—“I’m A Boy” also matched its predecessor in terms of sheer velocity: it was one of the Who’s hardest records to date, propelled by a barely restrained Keith Moon and toplined by a Roger Daltrey who adds a gleeful menace to the final verse. Fittingly, those concluding lines are where the song’s narrator asserts his masculinity after a lifetime of forced femininity from his family, yet the song doesn’t quite play as a triumph of gender norms: the Who’s anarchic power disrupts all conventions, sexual or otherwise.

The conclusion of Tommy is an epic seven-minute stretch on the original album, one that begins with the political defiance of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and escalates to the yearning refrain of “See Me, Feel Me,” before closing with the rousing finale of “Listening to You.” The concluding sections were broken out as a single and, later, indexed separately on live albums, but on the initial double-LP there’s an urgency that drives this three-part mini-suite, one that offers a stirring finale for the sprawling rock opera.

The pivotal moment in Quadrophenia, “5:15" finds the opera’s protagonist Jimmy speeding along on a train to Brighton, taking stock of what he’s seen and what he’s experienced. As he flits between disdain and longing for what he’s experienced, he spits out evocative character sketches, all punctuated by stabs of horns, rolling piano, and sympathetic vocal harmonies. It’s a mini-opera tucked away within a larger work, a disarming and vivid portrayal of adolescent angst and confusion.

The early 1970s found Pete Townshend at a creative peak as he attempted to process the fame of Tommy and his spiritual awakening as a follower of Meher Baba. Townshend wound up with a surplus of songs that didn’t make it to Who’s Next, the single-LP distillation of his aborted rock opera Lifehouse. Chief among those was “Pure And Easy,” a quest for spiritual connection that can be heard in passing on “The Song is Over”—Roger Daltrey sings its chorus as that song concludes—and popped up on Townshend’s 1972 solo debut, Who Came First. The outtake from Who’s Next—released on Odds And Sods—might be the definitive version, though, thanks to how Townshend and Daltrey’s voices intertwine, accentuating the open-hearted emotion at the heart of this song.

Tucked away on the second side of A Quick One, the Who’s second album, “So Sad About Us” became something of an indie standard, later covered both by the Jam and the Breeders. The longevity of “So Sad About Us” is due to how Pete Townshend channeled the bittersweet heartbreak of prime Everly Brothers in the context of a brightly-colored mod pop tune, a combination that gives the song musical and emotional resonance.

Written in 1972 when the world was awash with odes to old-time rock & roll, “Long Live Rock” is Pete Townshend’s own attempt to memorialize the hedonism of the glory days of rock. Building the song on a basic Chuck Berry riff, Townshend fills the song with self-deprecating humor (“We were the first band to vomit at the bar/and find the distance to the stage too far”), which gives “Long Live Rock” a nervy vigor. Initially released as part of the rarities comp Odds And Sods, “Long Live Rock” was later spun off as a single tied into the release of the documentary film The Kids Are Alright.

When promoting “Pictures Of Lily” early in 1967, Pete Townshend stumbled upon the phrase “power pop,” a tossed-off saying that became a style and then a movement. Townshend likely never put much stock in the phrase—he never uttered it again in an interview—but “Pictures Of Lily” remains one of the best examples of power pop: the sweetness of the melody is countered by the violence of the power chords, a combination of that is the essence of power pop.

The first piece of new music the Who released in the wake of Tommy, “The Seeker” picks up a thread hanging from the end of the rock opera: it finds Pete Townshend on a spiritual quest. The themes may echo Tommy but the lyrics are barbed and self-lacerating, an aggression that’s mirrored in the muscular rumble of the music. Tougher and harder than anything on Tommy, it points the way toward the monumental Who’s Next.

The concluding song on Quadrophenia, “Love, Reign O’er Me” finds the rock opera’s protagonist finding a moment of transcendence while being caught in the midst of a rain storm. On the verge of succumbing to his darkest instincts, Jimmy instead chooses the deliverance of love, the Who telegraphing the power of his decision by roaring at a volume that Roger Daltrey equals with his full-chested bravado.

Repetition may have robbed “Who Are You” from much of its intended meaning but heard outside of the confines of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the song retains a semblance of introspective power. Pete Townshend wrote the song when he was middle-aged crazy, unsure of his future due to the rise of punk and an increasing reliance on booze. These two forces come to a head on “Who Are You,” where he sincerely tries to figure out the answer to the titular question—a question that Roger Daltrey delivers with the confidence of somebody who has never asked that question of himself once in his life.

Part of a clutch of early 1970s singles from the Who celebrating the power of rock & roll, “Join Together” builds upon the template of “Baba O’Riley,” as the Who layer muscle upon the insistent pulse of a synth loop, each successive element adding to the song’s power. An imploration for the audience to “Join together with the band,” the single is as much communion as it is a call to action: it’s a song that requires the listener to have as much belief in the healing power of rock as the band does themselves.

The Who’s debut single (not counting “Zoot Suit,” a 45 they released under the name the High Numbers earlier in 1964) follows the blueprint Ray Davies created with “You Really Got Me”: it’s a rocker driven by three power chords. Where the Kinks were loud and heavy, the Who were tight and punchy. The chords are delivered cleanly and precisely, ratcheted up by an unusually contained Keith Moon and layers of vocal harmonies on the chorus, a twist that brings “I Can’t Explain” closer to pop.

The song instrumental in selling Tommy, both as a work of art and as a commercial concept, “Pinball Wizard” distills the rock opera’s central idea to its essence of “that deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.” What makes “Pinball Wizard” work is that the Who are using all the pop-art skills they acquired during the mid-1960s, layering the song with acoustic guitars and electric outbursts, letting Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend harmonize and answer each other with their intertwined voices: it’s a vigorous pop single buried within an epic album.

During the Who’s heyday, Pete Townshend was celebrated as a prophet of teenage angst. The roots of that reputation lie in “The Kids Are Alright,” a song that captures how Britain’s mod scene of the 1960s simultaneously celebrated the collective and the individual. While the titular phrase is a nod to the scene’s community, at its heart “The Kids Are Alright” is the anthem of a restless loner who feels such a need to escape, to run away from the world he knows, that he decides it’s ok to leave his girl behind because he trusts all the kids in his scene. It captures the quintessential adolescent paradox: the need to belong fighting the need to flee.

Written from the perspective of the chief villain in the scrapped Lifehouse rock opera, “Behind Blue Eyes” belongs in a line of self-loathing ruminations Pete Townshend wrote during the early 1970s. The push and pull between the narrator’s interior thoughts—his dreams aren’t as empty as his conscious seems to be—and his actions give the quieter segments a tension that inevitably explodes at the bridge, a segment where he’s asking to be stopped before he inflicts harm. Even after repeated exposure—and “Behind Blue Eyes” has never left the radio since its release in 1971—that barely contained violence retains its power.

Pete Townshend’s first stab at a rock opera is a pop-art masterpiece—a nine-minute suite comprised of six parts, each moving forward the story of an abandoned girl who, a year after her boyfriend left home, is seduced into betraying her long-distance love. The story is simple; the complexity lies in the execution. The Who don’t transition seamlessly between the segments, they lurch and lunge, tearing into chime and ring of the fanfare, playing the mock-western section with glee, culminating in the cathartic conclusion of “You Are Forgiven.” Legend has it that the band’s performance of “A Quick One, While He’s Away” on the Rolling Stones’ television special Rock N Roll Circus was so dynamic, the Stones decided to shelve the program because the Who blew them off the stage.

With its mesmerizing minimalist synthesized loop, “Baba O’Riley” announced itself as a clear break from Tommy: the Who had their eyes on the horizon, expanding their musical and lyrical borders. Initially intended as something of a fanfare for Pete Townshend’s abandoned rock opera Lifehouse, “Baba O’Riley” fused the future with an earthy present, its robotic pulse building to a bewildering folk-rock jig. The imagination in that progression is somewhat eclipsed by the band’s urgency: this is art-rock played with brute force, which is why it became an enduring anthem.

The Who’s American breakthrough—not only was it their first Billboard Top Ten hit, it was their only one—”I Can See For Miles” corrals their volcanic power in the context of a dynamic AM pop single. “I Can See for Miles” feels as inevitable as a thunderstorm. There’s coiled tension in Pete Townshend’s power chords, all punctuated by deliberate outbursts from Keith Moon, a roiling musical backdrop for Roger Daltrey striking a pose of enlightened defiance.

The pinnacle of the Who’s pop-art period, “Substitute” spins Motown into a mod anthem of alienation. Pete Townshend riffs upon a line lifted from Smokey Robinson’s “The Tracks Of My Tears,” turning the notion of being a substitute into a vivid portrait of imposter syndrome: “I look pretty tall but my heels are high/The simple things you see are all complicated/I look pretty young but I’m just back-dated.” Still early in his career, Roger Daltrey doesn’t sing these lines with his chest barreling out; there’s a palpable sense of doubt in his delivery that contrasts nicely with the punch of the Who, particularly with John Entwistle keeping the Motown connection tight by delivering a careening bassline that’s a brawnier version of James Jamersons’s classic bounce.

“Hope I die before I get old,” the refrain from the Who’s breakthrough single “My Generation,” eventually boomeranged back on the band when Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey didn’t fade away. The Who’s longevity—the surviving members stayed on the road for nearly six decades—in no way diminishes the power of the original single, which channels the countercultural chaos of the 1960s into a volcanic three-minute single. The Who threaten to careen off the rails—Keith Moon windmills across his drum kit, John Entwistle plays the bass solo, Daltrey stutters in a stylized mimic of a speed-addled mod—with Townshend providing the glue, giving the record its momentum and rebellious aesthetic.

The quintessential Who anti-protest anthem, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” finds Pete Townshend opting out of revolution, deciding that the new boss is the same as the old boss. He might be backing away from action but “Won’t Get Fooled Again” plays as a rallying cry, thanks to the Who’s vigorous yet clean attack: the rhythm section of Keith Moon and John Entwistle are as wild as ever, yet they’re somewhat controlled by playing along with the sequenced synthesized loop that runs through the song. At the center of the song stands Roger Daltrey, who delivers each of Townshend’s quips with rebellion, not resignation, culminating in a scream that’s one of the most potent in the history of rock & roll.