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Baba O'Riley

"Baba O'Riley"
The Who - Baba cover.jpg
Single by The Who
from the album Who's Next
B-side "My Wife"
Released 23 October 1971 (1971-10-23)
Format 7-inch single
Recorded
Genre Hard rock
Length 5:08
Label Polydor
Writer(s) Pete Townshend
Producer(s)
The Who singles chronology
"Let's See Action"
(1971)
"Baba O'Riley"
(1971)
"Behind Blue Eyes"
(1971)
Who's Next track listing

"Baba O'Riley" is a song by the English rock band The Who. It is the opening track to the band's studio album Who's Next, and was issued in Europe as a single on 23 October 1971, coupled with "My Wife".

Roger Daltrey sings most of the song, with Pete Townshend singing the middle eight: "Don't cry/don't raise your eye/it's only teenage wasteland". The song's title is a combination of the names of two of Townshend's philosophical and musical influences, Meher Baba and Terry Riley.

"Baba O'Riley" was included in Time magazine's list of the All-Time 100 Songs, Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

Townshend originally wrote "Baba O'Riley" for his Lifehouse project, a rock opera that was to be the follow-up to the Who's 1969 opera, Tommy. In Lifehouse, the song would be sung at the beginning by a Scottish farmer named Ray, as he gathers his wife Sally and his two children to begin their exodus to London. When Lifehouse was scrapped, eight of the songs were salvaged and recorded for The Who's 1971 album Who's Next, with "Baba O'Riley" as the lead-off track.

Townshend stated in an interview that "'Baba O'Riley' is about the absolute desolation of teenagers at , where audience members were strung out on acid and 20 people had brain damage. The irony was that some listeners took the song to be a teenage celebration: 'Teenage Wasteland, yes! We're all wasted!'"


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