"Baba O'Riley" is a song by the English rock band the Who, and the opening track to their fifth album Who's Next (1971). It was issued in Europe as a single on 23 October 1971, coupled with "My Wife". Roger Daltrey sings most of the song, with Pete Townshend singing the middle eight: "Don't cry/ don't raise your eye/ it's only teenage wasteland". "Baba O'Riley" appears in Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Songs" list, Rolling Stones list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. It also features on live albums: Who's Last, Live from Royal Albert Hall, Live from Toronto, and Greatest Hits Live. The original recording's violin solo is played on harmonica by Daltrey when performed live. Title The song is often incorrectly referred to as "Teenage Wasteland", due to these oft-repeated words in the song's chorus refrain. "Teenage Wasteland" was in fact a working title for the song in its early incarnations as part of the Lifehouse project, but eventually became the title for a different but related song by Townshend, which is slower and features different lyrics. A demo of "Teenage Wasteland" features in Lifehouse Chronicles, a six-disc set of music related to the Lifehouse project, and in several Townshend compilations and videos. The song's title refers to two of Townshend's major inspirations at the time: Meher Baba, and Terry Riley. Background and composition Townshend originally wrote "Baba O'Riley" for his Lifehouse project, a rock opera intended as the follow-up to the Who's 1969 opera, Tommy. In Lifehouse, a Scottish farmer named Ray would have sung the song at the beginning as he gathered his wife Sally and his two children to begin their exodus to London. When Lifehouse was scrapped, eight of the songs were salvaged and recorded for the Who's 1971 album Who's Next, with "Baba O'Riley" as the lead-off track. According to Townshend, at the end of the band's gig at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival, the field was covered in rubbish left by fans, which inspired the line "teenage wasteland". In another interview, Townshend stated the song was also inspired by "the absolute desolation of teenagers at Woodstock, where audience members were strung out on acid and 20 people had brain damage. The irony was that some listeners took the song to be