Singer cites tepid commercial response to 2019’s Who for reluctance to record a follow-up
The Who’s Roger Daltrey has dismissed the idea of the band recording another album, citing the tepid commercial response to their 2019 LP Who.
When asked by NME whether he and Pete Townshend plan on recording another album, Daltrey said, “What’s the point?”
“What’s the point of records? We released an album four years ago, and it did nothing,” Daltrey continued. “It’s a great album too, but there isn’t the interest out there for new music these days. People want to hear the old music. I don’t know why, but that’s the fact.”
Daltrey added that the Who’s fanbase ranges from eight-year-olds to 80-year-olds, but while younger fans are attending the band’s concerts, “Record companies, they just don’t do the same job as they used to.”
The singer’s comments echoed what Pete Townshend told Rolling Stone in 2021 in regards to Daltrey’s disappointment about the album’s lack of sales. “I don’t know whether there will be another Who album,” Townshend said at the time. “It needs Roger to be on it. And I think he was even complaining that he didn’t make any money out of it. I was like, ‘Who does make money out of fuckin’ records anymore?’ I don’t know who does. Maybe two or three people, but not many.”
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Townshend added that he floated the idea of a new Who album to Daltrey, but the singer only “half-liked” it. “I need to know that I’m facilitating Roger’s needs as a singer. There’s only two of us now,” Townshend said. “And these days, he insists on having music to sing, which he believes in, completely and utterly, that he can get inside. Unless he can inhabit the story of the song, he can’t do a good job. And so it means that I have to, in a sense, work as as tailor.”
While the Who won’t be spending time in the recording studio anytime soon, the rock legends have a summer’s worth of European tour dates planned for 2023.
