‘In The Ether’: the worst song The Who has ever written
Dear reader, I come to you, cap in hand, with an apology. Not for reminding you of one of the worst songs The Who ever put to tape. Although God knows I may need to apologise for that, given time. No, I need to apologise for a technicality. From a songwriting perspective, this may not actually be the worst song Pete Townshend has ever written for his band of Mod miscreants. After all, The Who first formed in 1964, over 60 years ago at the time of writing.
What’s more, save for the years between 1983 and 1996, they’ve been consistently writing, recording and touring for that whole time. This is despite losing half of their classic lineup in that time. Even during those off years, they got back together more than a few times, so of all their peers, only The Rolling Stones have more cumulative miles on the clock.
All this to say that Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey’s band have been responsible for some utter guff in their time. Not even due to inflated egos and deflated quality control that come with rock stardom either. Their 1965 version of Bo Diddley’s ‘I’m A Man’ would have been a strong candidate for this article if it wasn’t, y’know, a cover.
No, the truth is that most of The Who’s worst, most cringeworthy moments come from the same place their moments of uncontestable genius come from. Sheer, blinding ambition and creative bravery. Sometimes that gets you Tommy. Sometimes that gets you ‘Did You Steal My Money’ or ‘Waspman’. Those, I can forgive. They’re at least interestingly bad. Then you get ‘In The Ether’. Sweet baby Jesus and the little donkey too, where to begin here?
Why is ‘In The Ether’ the worst song by The Who?
At its core, the problem with ‘In The Ether’ is that it’s not the same kind of bad as the hilariously bad moments of The Who. You could find the chords online, play them yourself, and you’d think me mad. Not because it’s good or bad, it’s just… completely unremarkable. A lilting, waltzing durge wrapped around some faintly psychedelic burblings about love, or drugs, or probably nothing at all.
Granted, it’s weird that Ol’ Pete decided that “Autistic, caged I am” was a decent lyric. However, you’ve got to allow the man who wrote ‘The Acid Queen’ and ‘A Quick One’ to get a little weird. To be honest, that was probably why he thought in the studio that such a lifeless song, the sonic equivalent of beige paint drying, needed spicing up. The problem was that Townshend spiced it up by not only singing the song himself, but doing so in a Tom Waits impression.
Now, Tom Waits is one of the greatest singers in rock history. If someone can do a good Waits impression, then it might not be the world’s worst idea to give it a whirl. Pete Townshend cannot do a Tom Waits impression. Instead, he sounds like he’s doing the vocal while shitting out an entire typewriter. It’s probably a sign of how motivated Daltrey was in the studio that he just left Townshend to it when the guitarist suggested this.
What’s truly baffling is that at the time, Townshend considered this bad joke of a song one of the best he’d ever written. Exclaiming in The Guardian that, quite bafflingly, “I am writing better Stephen Sondheim songs than even Stephen Sondheim is writing!” While this is par for the course for Townshend, a man not given to flights of modesty, the fact that even he can stand by this song is hubristic even by his standards.
In the end, the only question to ask is what makes a bad song? The Who have made several examples, but in basically all of them, you have to admire the ambition. There is no ambition in ‘In The Ether’. Nothing to admire. Just a mid-tempo slog of an acoustic number that would go in one ear and out the other, were it not for the barbed hooks of Townshend’s humiliatingly bad vocal performance.
‘In The Ether’ is the worst of all possible worlds. A forgettable song that you can’t help but remember for all the wrong reasons.
