The Who: favorite songs from each album, throughout the years

Clockwise from top left, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle of The Who.

In anticipation of The Who’s two August shows in New Jersey, I am sharing, on Facebook, a song a day from each Who album, in chronological order. I am including songs from some, but not all, Who anthologies, live albums and soundtracks, and songs from some of the group members’ solo albums.

I am not making the argument that each selection is the “best” song from that album. It’s just my favorite, or something that I felt like sharing that day.

I didn’t allow myself to choose a song twice, so if I had already chosen a song, it was out of contention if it reappeared in the same or different form on another album.

(I have previously done this for Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan.)

Here are the videos (I will update daily, as I add videos), with a Spotify playlist featuring all the songs that are on Spotify (some aren’t), below. Enjoy!
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We start, today, with a song that actually pre-dates the band’s albums: “I Can’t Explain” — an anthem for the inarticulate! — released as a single in 1964, and a great harbinger of the explosiveness of the music to come.

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Today we get to the 1966 The Who Sings My Generation debut album (released in England, with minor differences, in 1965, as My Generation). I considered going with “The Kids Are Alright” and “A Legal Matter,” both undeniably great, but in the end thought that the anthemic title track and lead single was just too powerful to be passed over. Picking it also allows me to honor the greatest bass solo in rock history, by John Entwistle. (Can you name a better one?)

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The EP Ready Steady Who (which doesn’t have anything to do with the British music TV show “Ready Steady Go!,” except for the fact that the band had recently appeared on it) came out in the U.K. only, in 1966. I could have overlooked it for this list, but I’m including it, as it represents a chance to share “Barbara Ann,” The Who’s quite credible cover of The Regents’ 1961 hit (memorably covered by The Beach Boys as well).

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1967’s Happy Jack (the U.S. version of the British release A Quick One, with the title track replacing “Heat Wave”) is most notable for “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” which weaves together six songs in a little more than nine minutes, building to the transcendent final song, “You Are Forgiven.” It is an early sign of the artistic ambition that would lead to the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia.

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For 1967’s The Who Sell Out, it’s an easy choice (for me, at least): “I Can See for Miles,” a quintessential Who song and the band’s first Top 10 hit in The United States. As well as, arguably, drummer Keith Moon’s greatest performance.

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1968’s Magic Bus: The Who on Tour is weird. It’s not a live album, as you might assume from the title. And though it’s an anthology, it’s not a “greatest-hits.” It’s just the very good “Magic Bus” single plus a seemingly random collection of previously released album tracks and B-sides. It was a U.S.-only release, and some of the tracks had previously been available only in the U.K., so I guess it served a purpose for hardcore U.S. fans at the time. But it’s hardly essential now.

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It is easy to forget how quickly things happened, in the rock world, in the ’60s. The Beatles, of course, released all of their albums between 1963 and 1970. And The Who, similarly, progressed from their first single, “I Can’t Explain,” in December 1964, to a rock album that brought the concept of the rock opera to the world, Tommy, in May 1969.

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If Tommy represented The Who at their most wildly ambitious, their next album, 1970’s Live at Leeds, was a kind of back-to-basics project, capturing the pummeling power of their live act at a show at the University of Leeds in England. Even the album cover was designed to make it look like a low-budget, bootleg release. Live at Leeds is now widely considered one of the greatest concert albums ever. Among the highlights: a hard-rock reinvention of Eddie Cochran’s rockabilly standard, “Summertime Blues.”

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The Who’s contribution to the Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More triple-live album, released in 1970 (coincidentally, on the same day as Live at Leeds), was “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” the explosive climax to the “Tommy” medley that made up most of their set.

The Who, incidentally, had been scheduled to play second-to-last (before Jefferson Airplane), Saturday night of Woodstock weekend. They didn’t take the stage until 5 a.m. Sunday. And then Jefferson Airplane played at 8 a.m.

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John Entwistle’s Smash Your Head Against the Wall (1971) was the first solo album by a Who band member; it’s not surprising that he tried this out first, since he was always overshadowed as a songwriter by Pete Townshend in the band. Here is the album’s menacing “My Size,” with some great riffs by guitarist Dave “Cyrano” Langston, and drumming by Humble Pie’s Jerry Shirley.

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My favorite Who album is Who’s Next (1971). Quadrophenia is a close second, but ultimately, I have to go an album that is packed with so many of the band’s all-time greatest songs (“Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Baba O’Riley,” “Behind Blue Eyes”) and a lot of really good other ones, too (“Bargain,” “Going Mobile,” “My Wife,” “The Song Is Over”). I was 9 when “Who’s Next” came out, and bought it a few years later; it became a big part of the soundtrack of my adolescence.

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Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy (1971) was kind of a greatest-hits album, compiling the band’s singles, plus a few non-singles. The album marked the first U.S. album appearances for songs like “I Can’t Explain,” “The Seeker,” “Substitute” and “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.” (A concert performance of “Substitute” was heard on Live at Leeds, but this was the sublime studio version.) One thing I didn’t realize until today: The album’s title refers to the band members. The muscular Roger Daltrey was meaty, Keith Moon’s beats made him beaty, the large-framed John Entwistle was big, and Pete Townshend, who jumped around the stage a lot as he played his guitar, was bouncy.

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Pete Townshend’s first solo album, Who Came First (1972), did not sound like a Who album at all. The Who, at the time, was among the greatest hard-rock bands in the world, but this was gentle, personal and philosophical, aligning him with the emerging singer-songwriter movement. With Roger Daltrey singing lead, “Pure and Easy” had made it onto Who’s Next, but Townshend’s version from this album, which he sings himself, is, I think, better, underscoring the spiritual yearning that is at the heart of the song.

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John Entwistle’s second solo album Whistle Rymes (1972) featured guitar playing by Peter Frampton and future Wings member Jimmy McCulloch, and while it failed to find much of the audience, “I Wonder” was a great single, with powerful hooks, a surprise ending, and lyrics that I think I need to quote at length:

I wonder what would happen if my fish could fly,
Would it leap from its tank and hit the cat in the eye?
Out through the window and into the sky.
I’m so glad that sharks can’t fly.

Thank you, Mother Nature,
For the way you got things planned.
Don’t ever change a thing, I’m happy as I am.

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Roger Daltrey became the third Who member to release a solo album in 1973, with Daltrey. Most of the songs were co-written by Leo Sayer and pianist David Courtney, and the supporting cast included two Argent members, guitarist Russ Ballard and drummer Bob Henrit. Daltrey did not try to duplicate the wild energy of The Who, opting instead for introspective songs and (on several tracks) strings. Many of the songs sound downright delicate — not an adjective you would usually associate with The Who. The album did have a Top 10 hit in the UK, though (“Giving It All Away”), and made it into the Top 50 in the US.

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John Entwistle’s Rigor Mortis Sets In (1973) may be the weirdest album ever associated with The Who, blending Entwistle’s love for vintage rock ‘n’ roll with his taste for the macabre. The album includes covers (“Hound Dog,” “Lucille,” the novelty song “Mr. Bass Man”) and a straightforward version of Entwistle’s Who song “My Wife” but also downright bizarre stuff like “Peg Leg Peggy” (“When it comes to dancing she’s the queen/She sounds just like a sewing machine”) and “Do the Dangle,” a dance-craze parody so twisted I don’t even feel comfortable telling you what it’s about. (Listen here if you must.) Anyway, I’ll go with “Big Black Cadillac,” which is loose and fun in a way that most of this stiff of an album isn’t.

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There are a lot of great songs on The Who’s second full-length rock opera, Quadrophenia (1973), but I’m going with “I’ve Had Enough,” which I see as a kind of centerpiece of the project. The last song on the second of the four sides of the two-album release, it masterfully captures the frustration and confusion of the rock opera’s main character, Jimmy, weaving together many different musical ideas in a bracing six minutes, starting with Keith Moon’s brief but powerful drum intro and ending with Roger Daltrey’s anguished scream of “I’ve had enough of trying to love!” It also includes a bit of the majestic “Love, Reign O’er Me” theme, foreshadowing Jimmy’s final plea, in the rock opera’s closing song.

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1974’s Odds & Sods was, as its titles implies, a collection of (mostly) previously unreleased songs from throughout the band’s career, going all the way back to 1964’s “I’m the Face.” Highlights include “Long Live Rock,” which manages to be both anthemic and ambivalent at the same time, and “Put the Money Down,” whose raw, bluesy style the band would return to four years later, with their “Who Are You” single.

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John Entwistle’s 1975 album Mad Dog — credited, actually, to John Entwistle’s Ox — continued in the retro-rock vein of 1973’s Rigor Mortis Sets In, but without the macabre jokes. Pretty forgettable overall, honestly, though I do like “I Fall to Pieces” (not a cover of the Patsy Cline hit, but an Entwistle original).

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The soundtrack for the 1975 film version of “Tommy” featured The Who on some, but far from all, numbers. Elton John is backed by his own band, for instance, on “Pinball Wizard.” John Entwistle does play bass on Tina Turner’s “Acid Queen” and Eric Clapton’s “Eyesight to the Blind,” but no other Who members are heard. (Entwistle, Pete Townshend and Keith Moon are seen in the movie, though, backing Elton John and Clapton.) One of the few all-Who tracks on the soundtrack is the great instrumental, “Sparks.” Here is the movie sequence:

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Keith Moon released his only solo album, Two Sides of the Moon, in 1975. Small problem: He couldn’t sing. Not very well, anyway. And he only played drums on three tracks. One, though, is the decent “Crazy Like a Fox.”

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As its title suggests, Roger Daltrey’s second solo album, 1975’s Ride a Rock Horse, rocks a little more strongly than its predecessor, 1973’s Daltrey. He sings well, of course, but the album still comes off as generic. As on Daltrey, he didn’t write any of the material himself. And undoubtedly distracted by his commitments to The Who AND his budding film career (he was the leading man in two big-budget 1975 movies, “Tommy” and “Lisztomania”), he still doesn’t show much of a vision for what his solo career should be. Cool cover art, though.

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Has an overall-solid album by a major rock group ever had two worse singles than The Who by Numbers (1975)? “Squeeze Box” gets my vote as the band’s all-time low, and “Slip Kid” isn’t much better. But beyond that, the album is pretty good, with the rollicking, John Entwistle-written “Success Story,” Pete Townshend’s gorgeous, life-affirming ballad “Blue Red and Grey,” and a bunch of thorny rock songs, including the dire cry for help, “However Much I Booze.” “Won’t somebody tell me how to get out of this place?,” Townshend yelps, having hit rock bottom of his struggle with addiction.

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Roger Daltrey released his third solo album, One of the Boys, in 1977. It was his best solo effort to date, and featured some high-profile collaborators (with Eric Clapton, Mick Ronson, Alvin Lee and others on guitar, and Paul McCartney contributing a song, “Giddy”). Still no breakthrough hit single, but some respectable stuff, including “Say It Ain’t So, Joe,” the Murray Head-written meditation on fallen heroes, featuring John Entwistle on bass and Jimmy McCulloch (of McCartney’s Wings) on guitar.

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Pete Townshend’s 1977 collaboration with Faces/Small Faces singer-songwriter and bassist Ronnie Lane, Rough Mix, is a strong candidate for the best album any Who member ever made outside the group. It doesn’t have a single throwaway track, and how often can you say that about a side project? “My Baby Gives It Away” has the added benefit of Charlie Watts, brilliant as always, on drums.

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1978’s Who Are You, The Who’s last album with Keith Moon (who died three weeks after its release), had the band’s last U.S. Top 10 hit with its title track. The single was, technically, a double-A release with “Had Enough,” which means that neither song was designated as the A-side or the B-side (in other words, both were seen as potential hits). But “Who Are You” got all the airplay. Still, I prefer the John Entwistle-written, Roger Daltrey-sung “Had Enough,” which Entwistle had originally penned for an unfinished rock opera of his own.

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The 1979 documentary about The Who, “The Kids Are Alright,” collected some great historical clips. None were more electrifying, though, than two songs from the band’s mini-concert before an invited audience at Shepperton Studios in Middlesex, England, in May 1978 — arranged specifically to generate footage for the film. It would be Moon’s last concert performance with the band. Here is the Shepperton version of “Baba O’Riley.”

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Pete Townshend got lots of FM radio play for “Rough Boys” and “Let My Love Open the Door” — the first two singles from his 1980 solo album Empty Glass — and while I could be happy picking either one, I want to put in a good word for the more obscure “Cat’s in the Cupboard,” whose wild edge almost makes them sound overly polished.

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I have never seen the 1980 film “McVicar” — starring Roger Daltrey as real-life criminal, journalist and prison escaper John McVicar. And I have never listened to Daltrey’s soundtrack for the movie until now. And it’s not great. But I consider the catchy, punchy “Waiting for a Friend” (a single that couldn’t crack the Top 100, stalling at No. 104) to be one of the best songs I’ve discovered while doing this project. So, ya never know.

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The Who’s Face Dances album was in released in March 1981, and in August 1981, MTV debuted. The Who was one of the few old-guard rock groups that got decent airplay on the channel. Their video for the first Face Dances single, “You Better You Bet,” was the fourth video MTV played, as well as the 55th, making it the first video to get repeat MTV play. The Who had made black-and-white performance videos in the same style, and at the same session, for “You Better You Bet” and the album’s second single, “Don’t Let Go the Coat,” as well as the non-single “Another Tricky Day,” which is my favorite.

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The 1981 double album Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, documenting a series of four 1979 benefit concerts, included four songs by The Who. But I’m choosing to share the all-star “Rockestra Theme” encore, just to point out that Pete Townshend was the only member of the 24-piece group who refused to wear a silver suit — and appears to be having more fun than anyone else

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The 1981 double-album compilation Hooligans was made up, mostly, of very familiar tracks, but was notable for the inclusion of three non-album singles, including “Let’s See Action,” which had not previously been released in The United States in any form (unless you count the non-Who version that Pete Townshend had included on his 1972 Who Came First album).

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Too Late the Hero (1981) was John Entwistle’s fifth and final studio album, as well as the only one to yield a hit (albeit a minor one) with a shortened version of the epic title track, which features guitar and synthesizer by Joe Walsh. It was about 7½ minutes on the album but a tidy 3:16 on the single.

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Pete Townshend’s All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (1982) is, for the most part, an unlistenable, pretentious mess, but “Slit Skirts” at least shows a bit of melodic flair that the rest of the album lacks.

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After releasing It’s Hard, in 1982, The Who didn’t put out another studio album for 24 years. And, indeed, this album feels like the work of a band that had run out of things to say — even if two of its singles, “Eminence Front” and “Athena,” did receive a decent amount of radio and MTV play. It also has the distinction of inspiring what is arguably Rolling Stone magazine’s most absurd five-star album-review rave, ever. Check it out HERE if you want a laugh.

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In 1983, Pete Townshend raided his personal demo collection for a double album, Scoop, that is not, of course, consistently great, but does provide some worthwhile listening for a hardcore Who fan. Some of these songs (“Magic Bus,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Circles” etc.) were fleshed out by The Who, later; others had not been previously released in any form. It’s a shame we never got a chance to hear what The Who would have done with the roiling “Politician,” which dates from the late ’60s, though Townshend plays drums in a convincingly Keith Moon-like style (unless that’s Moon himself, doing the honors; I’m not sure).

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Roger Daltrey kept his streak of lackluster solo albums going with his fifth, Parting Should Be Painless, in 1984. Perhaps he missed an opportunity, though, by not releasing, as one of the album’s singles, his sleek-and-stylish cover of Kit Hain’s catchy “Looking for You” (an improvement over Hain’s overwrought 1981 original version).

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Who’s Last — a 1984 live double album, recorded at various 1982 shows — was, as its title implies, intended as the final entry in the band’s catalog. It didn’t turn out that way, as we now know. (Actually, we knew that by the end of the ’80s.) I include “Behind Blue Eyes,” which does not reinvent the 1971 song, but is a solid version of one of the band’s classics. And it is the only cut on the album recorded in New Jersey (at The Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford on Oct. 10, 1982).

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“Under a Raging Moon,” from Roger Daltrey’s 1985 album of the same name, was a tribute to Keith Moon, who had died in 1978. But it was not written by Daltrey. It was written by John Parr (who had a big hit of his own in 1985, “St. Elmo’s Fire”) and Parr’s frequent songwriting partner Julia Downes. Parr’s manager, who used to work for The Who, got it to Daltrey, and Daltrey liked it enough to record it, with several minutes of drum-focused music at the end, featuring Mark Brzezicki of Big Country, who also plays on the rest of the track; future Who drummer Zak Starkey; Stewart Copeland of The Police; Martin Chambers of The Pretenders; Roger Taylor of Queen; Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Asia; and Cozy Powell of Rainbow, Whitesnake and other groups. Both “Under a Raging Moon” and another track from this album, “After the Fire,” were minor hits.

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Resisting the temptation to title it More Odds and Sods, The Who, temporarily defunct as a band, put together another collection of tracks from their vaults — B-sides, rarities and a live version of “Bargain” — in 1985. It was titled, logically enough, Who’s Missing. Three tracks were previously unreleased, and one of them, a 1965 cover of the Motown obscurity “Leaving Here” (a minor hit in 1963 for Eddie Holland of the legendary Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team), is pretty great.

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Pete Townshend released White City: A Novel in 1985 and, no, I’m not even going to try to summarize the plot. I’m not even going to try to the convey the meaning of lead single “Face the Face,” which found Townshend experimenting with a rap-like vocal approach (!). But I can say, at least, that in regard to musical excitement, this track makes up for what White City, on the whole, lacks in terms of comprehensibility.

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Pete Townshend’s Deep End Live! album — recorded at two 1985 concerts, and released in 1986 — is worth listening to, beginning to end, the way few live albums are. With a band that includes Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour on guitar, he put new spins on songs from his Who and solo past, as well as blues classics and other covers. Particularly intriguing is the wistful edge he brings to The English Beat’s catchy 1982 hit “Save It for Later.”

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1987’s Two’s Missing — a second volume, basically, to 1985’s Who’s Missing — compiled more rarities, live tracks, etc. Not much of interest here, honestly, though “Dogs (Part Two),” originally released as the B-side to “Pinball Wizard,” is a fun, half-crazed instrumental. The songwriting credit here, incidentally, goes to Keith Moon, though on “Pinball Wizard,” the credit went to Moon/Towser/Jason (Towser and Jason being Pete Townshend and John Entwistle’s dogs, respectively).

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Its synthesizer-heavy production makes Roger Daltrey’s 1987 album Can’t Wait to See the Movie seem pretty dated, in 2025, and its lyrics seem pretty generic (an ongoing problem throughout Daltrey’s solo career). But “Balance on Wires” has a bit of charm, in its own bombastic way. (Trivia note: Don Snow, a member of Squeeze in 1981 and 1982 and an occasional participant in that band’s tours in the ’90s, plays keyboards on the album, and co-wrote this song with Daltrey.)

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Pete Townshend’s 1987 double album Another Scoop, like his 1983 double album Scoop, collected demos and “unreleased oddities,” to use his own phrase. And his well turned out to be pretty deep. Townshend was able to find some more gems (albeit, along with some not particularly notable demos of destined-for-bigger-things songs, and experiments that didn’t work); his gorgeous 1978 stab at orchestral pop, “Brooklyn Kids,” ranks at or near the top.

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1989’s The Iron Man: The Musical by Pete Townshend — a concept album based on Ted Hughes’ 1968 novel “The Iron Man: A Children’s Story in Five Nights” — led to a 1993 stage adaptation in London (which featured Townshend’s music) and the 1999 animated film “The Iron Giant” (which didn’t). In a way, the album recalls the “Tommy” movie more than the original Tommy album, as Townshend features guest vocalists on a number of songs, including Roger Daltrey, John Lee Hooker (!) and Nina Simone (!!), who makes a memorable appearance on “Fast Food.”

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In 1991, it had been nine years since the release of a Who studio album, so it was a bit of surprise when the band popped up on the tribute album Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin, performing “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.” It’s a song that is very much in their wheelhouse, but the thing I really love about their version is the surprise segue, about three minutes in, to an earlier Elton John song, “Take Me to the Pilot” (sung by Pete Townshend instead of Roger Daltrey). The way this combines two different musical themes, and two voices — and juxtaposes the bluster of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” with the relative gentleness of “Take Me to the Pilot” — reminds me of Quadrophenia.

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Despite my rule against picking the same song twice, I am going to break that in order to select the wild version of “Behind Blue Eyes” that Roger Daltrey and the traditional Irish-music group The Chieftains came up with for The Chieftains’ 1992 An Irish Evening: Live at the Grand Opera House, Belfast album (recorded at two shows in July and August, 1991).

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If I were a cruel guy, I would say that the title of Roger Daltrey’s 1992 album Rocks in the Head describes the affliction that must have convinced him he should keep releasing solo albums, this late in the game, even though the world was pretty much ignoring them. But I’m kind, so instead, I will just say while “Love Is” is obviously not as inspired as Daltrey’s best work with The Who, it’s got strong hooks, and is well sung, and really could have been a hit.

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Pete Townshend’s last solo studio album, to date, was Psychoderelict, in 1993. It’s a rock opera — about an aging rock star — with a lot of spoken word sequences. But I would recommend not even trying to make sense of it in that way, and just enjoying the songs, which, mostly, work pretty well individually.

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On two nights in February 1994, Roger Daltrey and The Juilliard Orchestra presented an event titled “A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who” at Carnegie Hall in New York. (I attended on the first night.) There were guest performers — including Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Sinead O’Connor and The Chieftains — and, oh yeah, Townshend and John Entwistle ended up participating as well. Proceeds went to The Columbia Presbyterian Babies Hospital, the predecessor of what is now known as Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. Most of the guests were not on the live CD and DVD that followed. But “5:15” does feature David Sanborn as saxophone soloist (with trumpeter Mark Inouye of The Juilliard Orchestra soloing as well), and it’s fantastic.

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As you would expect, The Who’s four-CD, 95-track 1994 boxed set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B offered a thorough overview, with most of the tracks already released, but with some rarities and previously unavailable songs included as well. Among the songs in the last category was a fiery, extended version of “My Wife,” recorded live at Vetch Field in Swansea, Wales, in 1976.

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In their ongoing quest to release every note they ever played — yes, that is an exaggeration, but it sure seems that way at times — The Who released the two-CD Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 in 1996. “Tommy” is performed, nearly in its entirety, and there are plenty of greatest hits and cool covers (“Summertime Blues,” “Young Man Blues,” “Shakin’ All Over”). But for me, the only real must-hear track is “Naked Eye,” expanded to 6½ minutes with some wild improvisation.

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The John Entwistle-written “Success Story,” which The Who released on The Who by Numbers in 1975, sounded great on The John Entwistle Band’s recorded-in-’98, released-in-’99 Left for Live concert album, with guitarist Godfrey Townsend singing lead. Granted, The Who handled it more creatively. But it works well, too, in the more conventional John Entwistle Band interpretation.

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1999’s Pete Townshend Live: A Benefit for Maryville Academy (recorded in 1998 at The House of Blues in Chicago) included a bonus disc with two tracks recorded at a 1997 benefit for the same cause, at the same venue, with Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. Here is a wonderful duet version of “Heart to Hang Onto,” featuring Vedder at his most emotive. The song originally appeared on the 1977 Townshend/Ronnie Lane album, Rough Mix.

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The third and, to date, last in Pete Townshend’s series of demo collections came out in 2001. Among the highlights of Scoop 3 is the philosophical “All Lovers Are Deranged,” which David Gilmour had recorded on his 1984 album About Face. “Love that was/Is love that is/Demands to always be unchanged/But then all lovers are deranged,” sings Townshend. It’s hard to argue with him.

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One of Pete Townshend’s most little-known musical partnerships was with composer, pianist and harpist Raphael Rudd. Rudd, who died in 2002, was a New Jerseyan, and his musical credits included a stint in the progressive-rock band Renaissance. He and Townshend met through their mutual interest in the teachings of the Indian spiritual master Meher Baba. Rudd worked on the soundtrack to the 1979 film version of Quadrophenia and Townshend’s 1980 solo album Empty Glass; Townshend (as well as Phil Collins and Renaissance’s Annie Haslam) appeared on Rudd’s 1980 album The Awakening Chronicles. In 2001, Townshend & Rudd’s The Oceanic Concerts was released, documenting small, invitation-only concerts they presented, as a duo, in 1979 and 1980. Here is “The Ferryman,” written by Townshend for a play inspired by Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha.”

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The 2003 three-CD set Live at the Royal Albert Hall combined two CDs of material from a 2000 show at the London concert hall with an EP of four songs from their Feb. 8, 2002 concert there, which was their last with John Entwistle (who died in June 2002). There were a number of guests at the 2000 show; one was Eddie Vedder, and here he is, bringing a lot of soul to the Quadrophenia song “I’m One.”

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The 2004 Who anthology Then and Now! 1964-2004 included two new Pete Townshend-written songs, and one of then, “Real Good Looking Boy,” is a very ambitious piece of songwriting, basically telling the life story of a rock artist who may or may not be Townshend. Roger Daltrey sings about someone who was inspired by Elvis Presley as a child, became a rock star (“I felt then that I moved/With all those lucky bucks and angels/High in the theater in the sky”), crashed to the ground with the realization of his own flaws, and then, finally, found love and acceptance that made him feel like that innocent kid again. Daltrey also croons a bit of the Presley hit “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Musicians on the track include bassist Greg Lake (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and King Crimson fame) and drummer Zak Starkey.

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The Who have not, to my knowledge, ever covered a Bruce Springsteen song. But on Roger Daltrey’s two-CD 2005 anthology Moonlighting, which offers an overview of his solo career along with some bonus tracks, he did release a live (complete with false start) version of “Born to Run” — an anthem that suits his trademark vocal style well.

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In 2006, The Who released their first studio album in 24 years, and their first since the death of John Entwistle: Endless Wire. The songs are connected to Townshend’s internet novella, “The Boy Who Heard Music,” and were later used by him in a rock musical of that name. Just listening to the album, though, won’t really help you put together a story line. But some of the songs are quite good, including the gritty “It’s Not Enough.”

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Pete Townshend’s contribution to the 2012 Amnesty International benefit album, Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International, was “Corinna, Corinna,” which was not, actually, written by Dylan. It’s a traditional song, first recorded by Bo Carter in 1928, though Dylan recorded it for his 1963 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album, adding lines from several different Robert Johnson songs. Anyway, Townshend sticks close to the Dylan’s graceful arrangement and croons it sincerely, and the video made for it shows him and his band (including Peter Hope-Evans, adding crucial support on harmonica) recording it.

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In the better-late-than-never department … Going Back Home, a 2014 collaboration between Roger Daltrey and Wilko Johnson (of the British pub-rock band Dr. Feelgood) that was dominated by songs previously written by Johnson for Dr. Feelgood and other projects, was the kind of lean, no-nonsense album that Daltrey should have been making throughout his solo career. It rose to the Top 10 of the British charts. Alas, there will not be another one; Johnson died in 2022.

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As anthologies often do, 2015’s Truancy: The Very Best of Pete Townshend featured two new tracks whose presence could be seen as a spur to get fans who already own everything else, to buy the set. But one of them, “How Can I Help You,” is truly strong enough to sound like it belongs there, anyway.

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The Who has released many live albums over the years. Most of the tracks on them are, of course, songs that have been included on many other Who live albums. A notable exception on the 2018 release Live at the Fillmore East 1968, though, was “My Way” — not the Sinatra anthem, but a 1959 song by Eddie Cochran that became a posthumous U.K. hit in 1963, three years after he died. The Who had recorded a studio version of the song, a year or two before the Fillmore East concert, but it wasn’t released until it came out on a deluxe reissue of Odds and Sods in 1998. Here is the live version:

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Roger Daltrey released his 10th and, to date, final solo album, As Long As I Have You, in 2018. Pete Townshend plays guitar on seven of the 11 tracks, including the standout, a cover of Stephen Stills’ “How Far,” which Stills had recorded with his Manassas band for its 1972 self-titled debut album.

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“Got Nothing to Prove,” a deluxe-edition bonus track to the 12th and, to date, last Who album — 2019’s rather unimaginatively titled Who — qualifies as one of the oddest songs in the band’s catalog: A previously unreleased 1966 demo with Pete Townshend’s original diffident vocals and new, bombastic music that makes the song sound like the theme for some kind of pseudo-hip 1966 movie that the actual Who, circa 1966, would have hated. The idea sounds awful on paper but, somehow, it kind of works, anyway.

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The Who With Orchestra Live at Wembley, recorded in 2019 and released in 2023, included a few of their more recent songs, such as “Ball and Chain” (from the 2019 Who album), a dark and unusually (for The Who) topical song inspired by human rights abuses at the United States’ Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

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The Who released a film of their Oct. 13, 1982 concert at the former home of the New York Mets in 2015, and made a two-CD version of it available in DVD form in 2024. Along with the setlist standards, Live at Shea Stadium 1982 includes a few songs from the band’s 1982 album It’s Hard, including the John Entwistle-written, Roger Daltrey-sung “Dangerous.”

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This last entry for the project hadn’t even been released when I started the project! In Aug. 22 of this year, The Who released a concert album, Live at The Oval 1971, recorded at Goodbye Summer: A Rock Concert in Aid of Famine Relief for the People of Bangladesh, which took place at The Oval cricket ground in London in September 1971. Here is their show-stopping version of the 1964 Marvin Gaye hit “Baby Don’t You Do It,” a song that they would release, via a different live recording, as the B-side of their 1972 single “Join Together.”

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