Listen Top Ten: Listening to You (#5)

Tweet

Rest In Peace, Queen Elizabeth. What a remarkable woman. My sympathies are with the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. You can’t plan anything like this, but by coincidence today’s song from my list of favorites with “listen” in the title comes from a British band. Here’s today’s song. #5: Listening to You - The Who Imagine if Yes, The Who, and the Guess Who had toured together! (There actually was a comedy skit, based on Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” classic, with that scenario.) This closes out the classic Who rock opera Tommy, although on the original album it’s not listed as “Listening to You” (just “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and no, not the Twisted Sister song pin on your lapel! ). One of the great things about this (and the whole rock opera) is you can take it a lot of different ways. Pete Townshend said the conclusion of Tommy was about the disillusionment of pop culture idol worshipping. I took it as Tommy being rejected as a false messiah at the end and his realization that he wasn’t, so he goes off to worship God. (Roger Daltrey spent a lot of time in the water in that movie, if you’ve ever seen it, and there’s the symbolism of baptism there. He dives into the water as this song starts in the movie.) Of course, you can overanalyze things to death and lose track of the fact that this is a great song, Tommy is a great album (the movie is pretty good, save for Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholson, ahem, “singing”…and most guys seem to like Ann-Margaret rolling around in the beans ), and The Who are a great band. Listening to You Written by Pete Townshend Recorded by The Who From Tommy, 1975 From you I get opinions: