The Life and Legacy of Rock Legends, The Who

There’s something about “My Generation” that still feels dangerous. The way Daltrey stutters out the words, the way the bass growls underneath, the way it ends in complete chaos—it doesn’t sound like a hit song, but it became one anyway. When Pete wrote it, he was only 20 years old. It wasn’t meant to be poetry.

It was frustration. It was fear. It was saying out loud what a lot of people were only thinking: we don’t want your world, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. The Who weren’t offering answers. They were giving voice to a feeling.