(Credits: Far Out / Flickr)
Fri 23 January 2026 7:51, UK
The Who are one of the most consequential rock bands of their era, and made history in many ways. A vital part of the classic rock landscape, alongside countrymen and brothers in arms The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, they led the British cultural and musical invasion of America in the 1960s to a world-changing effect.
From their era-defining hits like ‘My Generation’, to the claim that they invented the Barre chord and all of the destruction they left in their wake – not to mention the iconic Lincoln Continental submerged in a hotel swimming pool – The Who’s legacy is so stellar that they continue to be regarded as one of the finest out there. They have been cited as an inspiration by everyone from The Stooges to Oasis and even emos Panic! At The Disco.
With over 240 songs to their name, in their heyday, the group were one of the most prolific out there, selling over 100million records and earning much critical acclaim. However, despite the immense heights that the group have hit, due to the sheer number of tracks they have, there are some that the band – now comprised of frontman Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend – hate.
A mixture of classics and lesser-known releases, it seems unfathomable that The Who’s creative figureheads would loathe some of their work so intensely, but when you hear their reasons, things start to make sense.
The truth is, while the band may have found their footing in the 1960s, a decade apparently more renowned for its love-spreading than anything else, at the core of The Who was always a fractious element that seemed capable of chewing up that sentiment and spitting it out. The band were successful quite quickly, but rarely have they been a happy entity.
For the most part, this was seemingly down to the group’s inability to be friendly to one another. Daltrey, especially, seemed to be a caustic force within the band, finding himself irritating Keith Moon, famously fist-fighting with the drummer after flushing his stash, and nearly coming to blows every night on tour with Townshend. But while Daltrey was an irritant to some of the group, like a drop of bleach in the bathwater, Townshend was that same bath made only with boiling water.
With this kind of concoction, there is perhaps little surprise that they would also hate some of their own songs. The only unlikely thing is that some of the songs the two main men pick might be considered their best.
The Who as bright young things at the start of their career. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)The Who songs Roger Daltrey hates:‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’‘The Seeker’‘Music Must Change’It’s Hard
When speaking to Rolling Stone in 2018, Roger Daltrey – a man who is known for his penchant for hot takes – revealed that he hates one of The Who’s best-loved hits—1971’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, from the classic album Who’s Next. Most likely due to it being a staple of the band’s sets for nearly 50 years at the time of the conversation, he explained that it is the only song he’s “bored shitless” with. Daltrey said: “That’s the only song I’m bloody bored shitless with. I don’t know why, but I’m being honest.”
Following drummer Keith Moon’s untimely death in 1978, The Who carried on working until 1982, a period that is one of their most derided by fans. The group reunited in 1985 for the charity bonanza that was Live Aid after organiser Bob Geldof implored them to “play the fucking show” to raise money for the children starving in the Ethiopian famine.
Whilst it was a relatively good performance, the differences between Daltrey and Townshend were becoming more pronounced. This meant that during the show, the frontman used the opportunity to air his frustration about 1982’s It’s Hard, the group’s last album from the decade. “It’s Hard should never have been released,” Daltrey boomed. “I had huge rows with Pete. I said, ‘Pete, this is just a complete piece of shit and it should never come out.’”
In the same 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Daltrey once again expressed his disdain for It’s Hard, but did name one track he thinks is great. He said: “At the time, I didn’t like It’s Hard. I think there are some great tracks on it. ‘Cry if You Want’ is a great track. I think it was a little over-produced, a bit cleaned up. But there were some things that were quite interesting.”
Elsewhere, speaking to Uncut in 2015, Daltrey disclosed his lifelong disdain for 1971’s non-album single, ‘The Seeker’. He said: “I was never ever fond of ‘The Seeker’. To sing that song, to me, was like trying to push an elephant up the stairs. I found it cumbersome, the first song we’d ever done where I thought, ‘Nah, this is pretentious.’”
The final track on the list is ‘Music Must Change’, from 1978’s Who Are You, the last album to feature the band’s drummer Keith Moon before his death only three weeks after its release. Daltrey hates the song because he believes it is cursed and, therefore, refuses to play it live. Speaking to Howard Stern in 2015, he revealed: “There is one, and I won’t ever play it again. There’s a song on the Who Are You album, it’s called ‘Music Must Change’. Every time we played that in the studio, Keith couldn’t play the drums to it. It was in a three, four. Keith couldn’t play normal drums. Keith could play great Moon drums, and that was it,” he said.
However, as Moon couldn’t play the track, they enlisted a session drummer. Yet, because of his death’s close proximity to the session and release of the album, for Daltrey, ‘Music Must Change’ serves as a painful reminder not only of the tragedy but also brings back intense feelings of regret about recruiting another drummer instead of his friend. Incredibly, the curse of the song doesn’t finish there either.
Daltrey continued: “We played the song when we got back together with Kenny Jones as drummer, and then we dropped it for a long, long time. We brought it back in 2002 for the last tour with John Entwistle, and we rehearsed it, we were going to do it in the show, then John died.”
The Who songs Pete Townshend hates:‘Pinball Wizard’‘Dreaming From The Waist’‘Sister Disco’
It isn’t just Roger Daltrey who hates one of The Who’s best-loved efforts. Pete Townshend intensely dislikes ‘Pinball Wizard’, one of the highlights of the band’s 1969 rock opera, Tommy, a song he penned.
Townshend later admitted that he wrote the song to impress journalist Nik Cohn, who had given the band negative reviews. As well as being an influential music critic, Cohn was a well-known pinball lover. Townshend shallowly directed the track at the writer to gain some favourable reviews. Since being first performed in 1969, it has been undertaken at most Who shows, which compounds his feelings toward it.
Describing the song’s writing, Townshend once said: “I knocked it off. I thought, ‘Oh, my God this is awful, the most clumsy piece of writing I’ve ever done. Oh my God, I’m embarrassed. This sounds like a Music Hall song. I scribbled it out and all the verses were the same length and there was no kind of middle eight. It was going to be a complete dud, but I carried on.”
He continued: “I attempted the same mock baroque guitar beginning that’s on ‘I’m a Boy’ and then a bit of vigorous kind of flamenco guitar. I was just grabbing at ideas. I knocked a demo together and took it to the studio, and everyone loved it. Damon Lyon-Shaw (the engineer on Tommy) said, ‘Pete, that’s a hit.’ Everybody was really excited, and I suddenly thought, ‘Have I written a hit?’ It was just because the only person that we knew would give us a good review was a pinball fanatic.”
Elsewhere, Townshend has stated that he hates ‘Dreaming From The Waist’ from 1975’s The Who by Numbers. He said: “‘Dreaming From The Waist’ is the song I hate more than anything on Earth. In fact, I think I hate it most because it’s a song which Roger used to like to play.”
Remarkably, however, there is another song he hates more than the above; ‘Sister Disco’ from 1978’s Who Are You. Townshend added: “I think actually ‘Sister Disco’ qualifies, yeah ‘Sister Disco’ I hate even more than ‘Dreaming From The Waist’ because there is a point in which every time we’ve done it where Roger comes over to me, stands next to me and makes some kind of soppy smile, which is supposed to communicate some kind of Everly Brothers relationship we have for the audience, which isn’t actually there.”
He continued: “It’s supposed to be an act where I’m supposed to collude like ‘we know each other very well we look like enemies, but we are friends really’ kind of look. Often that will be the moment where I look him in the face and go, ‘You fucking wanker,’ and he gets angry when I do that.”
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