The Who may have retired from the road, but Pete Townshend says the band could still have another album in them.
The possibility is surprising given that singer Roger Daltrey has previously expressed little interest in making another record. The group’s last release, 2019’s Who, sold poorly, leading Daltrey to complain about streaming economics and the modern music marketplace.
“There’s no record market any more,” he told Uncut. “Everybody talks about streaming, but have you seen what artists get from that? It’s a joke.
Article continues below 
“It was great to get an album out there, something that the fans liked, and I was really proud of it. But far too much money was spent making it.”
But it wouldn’t be the Who if Townshend weren’t contradicting his longtime partner. The guitarist raised the possibility of a new record in an Instagram post showing off his new writing studio, formerly owned by “Never Gonna Give You Up” singer Rick Astley.
“It’s mine now,” Townshend wrote. “I’m loving it. Great sound. I’m very spoiled.”
When a commenter replied, “There’s no way you’re gonna do another Who album,” Townshend shot back: “You might be wrong. Roger wants to give it a try.”
They certainly have no shortage of material. Townshend is famously prolific and has said he has hundreds of unfinished pieces of music—many of which he has considered completing with the help of artificial intelligence.
I’ve got about three hundred and fifty, four hundred and fifty pieces of music. It might be some hits.”
— Pete Townshend
“I’ve got about three hundred and fifty, four hundred and fifty pieces of music,” he said. “Now, a lot of it is probably terrible. I’ve managed to wade through about half of it.”
He added that he’s interested in experimenting with platforms such as Suno, which can generate songs from text prompts, to help finish some of the fragments.
“It might be some hits.”
Townshend has previously joked that AI could even recreate the style of the band’s classic era.
“If I told A.I., ‘Write a load of Pete Townshend songs like he used to in 1973,’ a lot of Who fans would be really pleased.”
But his more recent comments suggest he’s serious about using the technology to help shape his backlog of unfinished material.
If I told A.I., ‘Write a load of Pete Townshend songs like he used to in 1973,’ a lot of Who fans would be really pleased.”
— Pete Townshend
The Instagram post also gave Townshend an opportunity to reveal his current songwriting setup, centered around a laptop and a pair of Genelec speakers. (No guitars, electric or acoustic, were in sight, but we assume they’re not far away.)
“I use a MacBook. The sequencer is an MPC Live III. I use it on the road like a portastudio,” he wrote, referring to the old multitrack recorders once made by Tascam.
Should the Who convene for another album, the stripped-down approach would at least address one of Daltrey’s chief complaints: the high cost of making records in the modern era.
