The Who turn 50 this year and to mark the occasion, co-founders Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are releasing a two-disc retrospective collection called Who Hits 50! celebrating their half-century together. Also included: a brand new track called “Be Lucky” — their first in eight years — which shouts out “Get Lucky” guys Daft Punk, weirdly (kind cutely).
Otherwise, the song is everything one would expect from the band at this point — Daltry is 70, Townshend is 69 — which is to say, classic rock powered by the band’s signature tones and gruff belting, plus enough balls to keep you from writing off these “talkin’ ’bout my generation” senior citizens. In fact, the track’s an ode to making your own success, with Daltry singing you should “get it from a bottle or squeeze it from a stone.”
He also throws in a number of somewhat bizarre band references from over their half-century. At one point he cites AC/DC: “If you want to want to sell, you’ve got to kiss and tell, and you’ve got to do a cover of ‘Highway to Hell.'” And later, as mentioned, he sings, “You want to climb without a safety line, Daft Punk will tell you that it’s gonna be fine,” before a robo-voice sings, “It’s gonna be fine.” One Direction is notably left out.
Listen below to hear Daltry and Townshend backed by Pino Palladino on bass, Zak Starkey on drums, and keyboardist Mick Talbot, formerly of Style Council and Dexys Midnight Runners. The song is the last track on the new collection, which pulls from the band’s 11 studio LPs with a heavy focus on the group’s iconic first decade.
Townshend and Daltrey are donating their royalties from “Be Lucky” to the Teen Cancer America charity, as the Wall Street Journal reports, which they launched in 2011 to benefit teens and young adults with cancer in the United States and is an offshoot of the Teen Cancer Trust the duo started 22 years ago in the United Kingdom.
Who Hits 50! will be out October 27.
Listen to “Be Lucky” here:
//www.youtube.com/embed/7K_CGq-1u1E
