No, it’s not the one for Taylor Swift’s THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL (which I streamed most of), written by Taylor superfan Maya Georgi. Not linking to it here, but the tone is essentially Taylor Swift is the greatest and I love everything of hers forever and always.
Here’s schmitt, from his list of 500 worst ROLLING STONE album reviews, discussing Parke Puterbaugh’s enthusiastic overvaluation of The Who’s underwhelming (Roger Daltrey famously disliked it) 1982 album IT’S HARD, which, apparently, Jann Wenner must have determined unpannable since The Who were in the midst of what was envisioned as their this-is-it farewell tour:
Rating: 5 Stars
"It figures. Just when the Who had ceased to matter much – the band members having channeled a lot of their power and volatility and commitment into solo careers, employing the Who chiefly as a vehicle to take a greatest-hits revue on the road – it figures that they'd make their most vital and coherent album since Who's Next. It's fitting that It's Hard is a great record because, given the inverted world of Pete Townshend's mind, it's what you were least expecting." (Parke Puterbaugh, 9/30/82 Review)
The Who formed in London in 1964. The band featured Pete Townshend on guitar, Roger Daltrey on vocals, John Entwistle on bass, and Keith Moon on drums. For the next fourteen years, this lineup didn't change.
The band was notorious for their raucous behavior and in-fighting that was even rumored to have become physical at times. Yet each of the four members were insistent that if any of them were to leave the group, the Who would cease to exist. "I don't think it would carry on," Keith Moon told Melody Maker's Chris Charlesworth in the 4/22/72 issue. "It would naturally fall apart."
Pete Townshend, the Who's principal songwriter, agreed. "[W]e're lucky to be together today, to be the same four blokes we always were," he remarked to Dave Schulps in the April '78 issue of Trouser Press. "Because when you've known and worked with four people for 15 years, in the end you've got a power no one else can get unless they wait 15 years."
Yet to many observers, by 1978 Townshend's famous adage "hope I die before I get old" was really beginning to seem like an albatross for the group. Townshend himself announced upon the release of the band's eighth album, Who Are You, that he was done touring with the Who. "[T]he Who now seem to consider themselves tired and old," Ira Robbins observed in a 1978 issue of Crawdaddy!. "Who Are You is a tired and old album, one that scarcely does them justice."
On September 7, 1978, Keith Moon died from an overdose of Hemineverin, a drug prescribed to him to treat symptoms associated with alcohol withdrawal. He was thirty-two years old.
One might have thought that this event would have been the impetus for the Who to finally disband after years of decline, but oddly enough, it had precisely the opposite effect. Indeed, Townshend now professed a renewed interest in the Who. "Ironically, Keith's passing was a positive thing," he told Chris Welch in a 1/27/79 interview with Melody Maker. "I feel now there is a tremendous open door and I feel very excited about the fact the Who is a well-established band with a tremendous history, but suddenly we're in the middle of nowhere – a new band. I'm really excited about it."
Towshend later described his reaction to Moon's death as "immediate and completely irrational, bordering on insane" in his 2012 autobiography, Who I Am. Roger Daltrey concurred in a 1994 interview with Goldmine. "Keith was such an extraordinary drummer, to try and replace him was just ridiculous," he said.
If Moon's passing had briefly rejuvenated Townshend's flagging interest in the band, the effect seems to have largely dissipated by their next LP, 1981's Face Dances. By this time, Townshend seemed destined to follow Moon to an early grave, having descended into an abyss of alcoholism and drug addiction. Townshend was in rehab when the band started work on their tenth album, It's Hard. "In my absence, The Who had started recording at Glyn Johns's new studio in the country, with Andy Fairweather Low standing in on guitar," Townshend recalled in his autobiography. "I felt pressure to jump off the plane from rehab and join them directly, [but] it wasn't until 3 March that I drove down to meet everyone."
"Much had been said in the press about what I had or hadn't delivered to The Who as its major songwriter, but I wanted a brief from them, some guidance," he continued. "My head was empty."
The guidance Townshend sought was not forthcoming. Daltrey and Kenney Jones, Moon's replacement, advised they wanted to perform songs about "the important issues of the day", an idea Townshend dismissed as crazy. It is little surprise, then, that the results of these sessions were nothing short of disastrous. Roger Daltrey, in particular, was unsatisfied with the album. "When Roger heard the final mixes he wanted to hold it back, because to his ear it didn't really feel finished," Townshend said. "But with the tour closing in on us we were running out of time, and I persuaded him to let it stand."
Townshend made the rounds upon the record's release, assuring the press that the band had been completely revitalized in the process of making It's Hard. "Recording has rejuventated us," he told Chris Salewicz in the November '82 issue of Creem. "Not so much in musical terms, but in the sense of standing together and saying that we're prepared to actually change the way that we live, and the way that we operate, if it will make a difference. The new Who songs are violently aggressive, the most aggressive stuff we've ever come up with. The songs that I've written are totally preoccupied with the danger and tension of living in the 80's. And that is the common attitude and stance that the band has."
"It’s Hard should never have been released," Daltrey retorted in 1994. "Pete had just come off detox and he was really looking for help. We did It’s Hard in the studio and the band was rehearsing before Pete got out of the clinic just to try and keep a vibe up, to try and support Pete. But when the album was finished and I heard it I said, 'Pete, this is just a complete piece of shit and it should never come out!'"
"I hated it," he continued. "I still hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it!"
Mick Farren panned this album in his October '82 review for The Village Voice. "Townshend's alternating need to know (remember 'The Seeker') and need to confess, Entwistle's seeming distaste for all the trappings of stardom, and the general erosion of age seems to have produced a standardized late-model Who song that's long, wordy, medium-paced, based on an over-extended guitar or synthesizer figure, and lacking in both hooks and genuine power," he wrote. "I fear that It's Hard – and it's a terrible thing to find yourself saying about the Who – sounds like an album that was made because it had to be, with little to offer bar sluggish, warmed-over riffs and midlife angst."
Meanwhile, Parke Puterbaugh gave the album a five-star "classic" rating in Rolling Stone, describing it as the band's best effort in more than a decade.
In later years, many critics were unsparing in their assessment of It's Hard, which was widely regarded as an unmitigated failure. "This record should never have been released," Steven Rosen wrote in 2007, echoing Daltrey. "It is ur-Who, a particularly nasty strain of music that bears only a marginal similarity to the original band. And if money had never been a part of the equation before this, it did pose its ugly snout here. The album represented one of three records contracted to the Warner Bros. label. Everything that plagued Face Dances infects this one: poor production, half-hearted performances, and sickly songs. Townshend had been hoarding all the notable tracks for his own interests, and thus, his own solo records of the time are far better representations of the recorded works."
Mark Kemp rated It's Hard two-and-a-half stars in the fourth edition of the album guide: "by the time of the aptly named It's Hard, the Who had lost all inspiration."
