Top 10 Pete Townshend Solo Songs

Photo: Heinrich Klaffs, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Our Top 10 Pete Townshend Solo Songs list looks back at the music Pete Townshend released outside his legendary band, The Who. Townshend has never followed a predictable release schedule, either as a solo artist or with The Who. However, the recordings he created with the band rank among the finest in classic rock history.

Townshend’s fascination with large-scale stories and conceptual music produced The Who’s Tommy and Quadrophenia, and that instinct continued throughout his solo career. White City: A Novel, released in 1985, The Iron Man: The Musical by Pete Townshend, released in 1989, and Psychoderelict, released in 1993, all placed songs inside broader narratives.

His first official solo album, Who Came First, was released in 1972. Townshend followed it with Rough Mix, his 1977 collaboration with Ronnie Lane. In 1980, he released Empty Glass, his most commercially successful solo album. All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes followed in 1982.

Psychoderelict remains Townshend’s most recent solo studio album. He has continued to issue archival recordings, live collections, compilations, and occasional new material, including the 2023 charity single “Can’t Outrun the Truth.” In 2025, his seven principal solo studio albums were collected in Pete Townshend: The Studio Albums.

Townshend’s extensive solo catalog also includes live albums, demo collections, outtakes, alternate versions of Who songs, and collaborations. The ten selections below are personal favorites chosen to celebrate that catalog, inspire further listening, and offer a few surprises along the way.

# 10 – “Empty Glass”

We wanted to open this Top 10 Pete Townshend Solo Songs list with a killer cut, and “Empty Glass” fits that description perfectly. The song served as the title track of Townshend’s 1980 album, his second official solo studio record, or his third major album outside The Who if the Ronnie Lane collaboration Rough Mix is included.

Townshend had already brought “Empty Glass” to The Who during the sessions for Who Are You. The band’s version remained unreleased at the time and later appeared as a bonus track on an expanded edition of the album.

Townshend’s solo recording is raw, spiritual, and deeply personal. The title draws upon the image of the heart as an empty vessel waiting to be filled with divine love. Although “Empty Glass” was not released as a single, it remains one of the album’s finest performances.

# 9 – “Face the Face”

Continuing with our list, we turn to one of Pete Townshend’s most overlooked albums, White City: A Novel. The brilliant record was released in 1985 and combined a song cycle with a companion film centered on life around the White City housing estate in West London.

“Face the Face” was released as one of the album’s principal singles. The song reached number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of Townshend’s biggest American solo hits. Its pounding drums, horn arrangement, synthesizers, and call-and-response vocals capture the enormous production style of the middle 1980s without losing Townshend’s identity.

White City: A Novel reached number 26 on the Billboard 200 and became Townshend’s second RIAA-certified Gold solo album after Empty Glass.

# 8 – “It Must Be Done”

This is an excellent piece of music that many fans may have missed. “It Must Be Done” was created by Pete Townshend and composer Nathan Barr for the FX television series The Americans.

Townshend and Barr exchanged musical ideas before building the song around Barr’s evocative cello writing. Townshend added guitar, lyrics, and vocals. The finished recording appeared in a 2014 episode during one of the show’s most intense sequences.

Listen to this one closely. It is an epic and unsettling piece of music. And for anyone who has never watched The Americans, all we can say is that it remains one of our favorite television shows of all time.

# 7 – “Misunderstood”

“Misunderstood” was released on the Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane album Rough Mix in 1977. The record brought together two songwriters connected by friendship, the British mod movement, and their shared devotion to Meher Baba.

Something wonderful lies in the simplicity of this grooving blues song. Townshend sings from the viewpoint of someone who would rather appear mysterious and misunderstood than allow people to recognize how easily he can be read.

The arrangement is sparse, witty, and loose. Peter Hope-Evans’ harmonica gives the song much of its character, while Townshend’s dry vocal keeps the performance balanced between confession and comedy.

# 6 – “English Boy”

As we move into the second half of our Top 10 Pete Townshend Solo Songs list, we turn to the opening track from Psychoderelict. Released in 1993, the album remains Townshend’s most recent solo studio record.

Psychoderelict was presented as a conceptual music project that mixed songs, dialogue, and radio-drama elements. Its central character, Ray High, is an aging and creatively blocked rock star whose abandoned musical project becomes entangled in manipulation, scandal, and questions about artistic purpose.

“English Boy” introduces the record with swagger and confrontation. Townshend looks at youth culture, national identity, celebrity, and the image of the angry English rock musician while refusing to treat any of those subjects too reverently.

# 5 – “Give Blood”

“Give Blood” was released on Pete Townshend’s brilliant 1985 album White City: A Novel. The recording brought together an extraordinary group of musicians, including Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour on guitar, Pino Palladino on bass, and Simon Phillips on drums.

Palladino later joined The Who’s touring lineup after John Entwistle died in 2002. His playing on “Give Blood” is already a major part of the track’s momentum.

This roaring rock song is fascinating because it was released in the middle of the era’s huge studio productions. The gated drums, pulsing bass, delayed guitar, synthesizers, and layered vocals are unmistakably 1980s, yet the recording still carries the spirit of Townshend’s 1970s work.

# 4 – “Slit Skirts”

Pete Townshend’s “Slit Skirts” is a lesson in how to build a song. It begins slowly, settles into a sleek and measured verse, and then opens into a full rock chorus filled with substance, frustration, and wonder.

The song appeared on the 1982 album All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes. Townshend wrote much of the record during a difficult period involving addiction, exhaustion, family strain, and his uncertain future with The Who.

“Slit Skirts” examines middle age, damaged relationships, fading glamour, and the uncomfortable distance between youthful expectations and adult reality. The song is deeply personal, but its questions about love and disappointment make it universal.

# 3 – “Let My Love Open the Door”

“Let My Love Open the Door” became Pete Townshend’s most successful solo single. Released from Empty Glass in 1980, it reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100.

The bright synthesizer pattern, handclaps, direct chorus, and compact arrangement made the song perfect for radio. Its simplicity can disguise the spiritual idea at its center. Townshend has described the love in the song as something larger than ordinary romantic affection.

I have always felt that the keyboard figure and chord movement anticipated some of the pop-rock sounds that became dominant a few years later. I have even wondered whether it had some influence on Van Halen’s “Jump.” That remains only a personal hunch, but the resemblance has always caught my ear.

# 2 – “Pure and Easy”

This incredible piece of music was originally written for Townshend’s ambitious Lifehouse project. The Who recorded the song during the sessions that produced Who’s Next, but it was left off that album.

Townshend released his home-demo version of “Pure and Easy” on his first official solo album, Who Came First, in 1972. The song presents the central musical and spiritual idea behind Lifehouse: one pure note exists at the heart of creation, connecting every person and every sound.

The Who’s full-band version was later released, but Townshend’s solo recording has its own quiet power. It allows listeners to hear the song close to its original source, before the concept grew into one of the most famous unfinished projects in rock history.

# 1 – “Rough Boys”

“Rough Boys” was the opening track and first single from Pete Townshend’s excellent 1980 album Empty Glass. Many fans and critics have argued that Empty Glass was a stronger album than The Who’s 1981 release Face Dances.

It would have been fascinating to hear The Who record “Rough Boys,” but Townshend’s solo version stands perfectly well on its own. The track is aggressive, provocative, rhythmically sharp, and packed with the kind of guitar attack associated with his best work.

The song also carried a personal directness that may have been difficult to express through Roger Daltrey’s voice. Townshend’s own performance gives the lyric its tension, vulnerability, and confrontation.

The video received substantial exposure during the early years of music television, helping establish Townshend as a forceful solo performer rather than simply the songwriter and guitarist standing beside The Who’s lead singer. This is a killer track and our number one Pete Townshend solo song.