Be Lucky – The Who

The last recorded output (at the moment of writing) for The Who is this chipper little ditty (Roger’s new solo album not withstanding). Be Lucky was tagged onto the end of their The Who Hits 50 compilation a couple of years back to entice completists to dig deep one more time.

It’s a weirdly rambling lyric which references winning on the horses and Kylie Minogue. It name checks AC/DC a couple of times (I’m unaware of the two bands paths every crossing before). Entirely more this century it has Daft Punk impersonators piping in platitudes from the year 2000 at one point(ItS gOnNa BeEe FyNe). And yet, you get all this to the sort of tune an East End Barrow Boy could whistle. It should by rights be an unholy and embarrassing mess. But its ruddy good fun.

The Who specialised in making the weirder moments of their output seem entirely at home among the more anthemic parts. Boris The Spider, Dogs, Postcard and Pictures of Lily could have been recorded by four different bands. This week I’ve purposefully avoided the obvious hits in their obvious versions. Everyone knows Pinball Wizard, My Generation and I Can See For Miles as the era defining singles they were. Everyone knows Won’t Get Fooled Again, Who Are You and 5:15 as the epic anthems of one of the biggest of all rock bands. But the week should finish with a pop art bang!

The animated lyric video makes use of a hijacked Roy Lichtenstein schtick and mixes it with archival footage from down the years. You get the end of term vibe that this really is the band calling it quits on record. And they’re going out an a breezy little number…

A quick one before they’re away if you will, if you shall, if you must.