10 Songs That Changed Rock History

As we reached the start of the '70s, the ideal Summer of Love mentality was starting to look more and more like a thing of the past. No matter how much acid you took and how many times you listened to this music, there was no way that you were going to build a utopia from the ground up on the strength of rock and roll. It seems that Pete Townshend knew that though, and decided to make his entire victory lap about the fall of the youth movement.

Or at least, that's what Baba O Riley was supposed to be about. While the original idea was for this to be a companion to the eventual rock opera Lifehouse, the meaning behind the chorus "teenage wasteland" had to do with kids wasting their lives and trying to use music as some sort of refuge away from their meaningless lives.

If you're using music as an act of resistance, you'd be hardpressed to find a much better candidate than this song, with those ringing power chords having the same effect whether they're played for a small crowd or a booming stadium. Over the years, the sentiment of the song is almost being passed down, with Pearl Jam eventually recording an amazing cover of it and it later being copied in Best Song Ever by One Direction. Like it or not, those guitar stabs are proof enough that rock and roll wasn't going to be going anywhere.