Song series #2: (an album) The Who's Tommy

CW/TW: sexual assault, abuse

 Hey all!

A lot of series I tried to start on this blog have gone stagnant. But I had an idea right now to talk a little about the album Tommy by The Who. 

When you think about Tommy, you might first think about Pinball Wizard. It is an awesome track. I love it. My fave song from this album is Sally Simpson. I actually covered Sally Simpson on a separate blog post.

This album can be dark at times, or at least gets heavy with the themes. The songs sound delightful but the album is largely about psychological trauma. There's a song about getting sexually assaulted by a family member. It is one of the things that adds to Tommy's trauma. Then Tommy finds out about his mom cheating on his father. I saw the movie they did from the 70s that is fantastic and builds a visual motif of the album. Tommy takes the words literally and can't talk, hear or see. He can't use these senses and communication because he is psychologically scarred. 

The fact that Tommy is so traumatized by what he witnessed as a kid and the abuse he endured is burdening his mom and his step dad. The movie does a fantastic job as his mom kind of just stands by and kind of gaslights him or at least allows the step dad to gaslight him.

There are some songs I listen to way more than others on the album for sure. I listen to the song Christmas a lot esp. closer to actual Christmas. 

It's not a long blog post obviously, but they take advantage of Tommy's "Jesus like" narrative by making money on his guru methods. I can't remember exactly from the movie or the album but I think he might revert into not seeing, hearing or talking again at the end of the album.

I'm going to write more music and song related posts because these are the posts that have a lot of traction here on my blog!

curlyalicia