Can you believe it's been 22 years since we've heard a new song out of The Who? Can you believe this is the best they could come up with?

Perhaps you haven't heard their new little disaster, apparently titled "Real Good Looking Boy." No, it's even worse than the title.

It opens promisingly enough, until Roger Daltry hits his first note, or takes an admirable shot at it. Nothing horrible, he the voice is just gone, straining the whole time, nowhere to reach.

Bummer there, but I figured I could just listen around that. The songwriting, that should only get better, right?

Check the whole lyric out here, or I'll give you a taste. The first verse has him looking into the mirror for the first time as a kid and exclaiming several different times, "That's a real good looking boy." So he runs to tell his mom how great he looks and verse two--all of verse two--runs:

She said, son, well, you know, you're an ugly boy,
You don't really look like him.
In this long line there's been some real strange genes,
You got 'em all, you got 'em all, with some extras thrown in.

Now I love the opening of that--best moment in the song. Jarring, almost staggering, suddenly I was engaged again after that odd, hokey, perplexing opening. You're an ugly boy? Yow. Where's this going?

Nowhere. You got bad genes? That's it? And the climax of the pivotal verse: You got 'em all, you got 'em all, with some extras thrown?

Lyrics don't always translate to print well, I know. It's much worse when you hear it. His voice really gets ahold of that line like it's the pay off, You got 'em all -- louder, stronger, reach for it: You got 'em all -- and now the big payoff: with some extras thrown.

What? Are you kidding?

It really gets worse. Verse three cuts to him holding his baby, realizing what true beauty is, and how he survived--yes, he really uses the word: "managed somehow to survive . . ."--in spite of his ugly-duckling childhood, because God also endowed him brains, and grace and sweet sweet love.

Isn't that the theme of every God-awful Barbara Streisand movie of the past 20 years? Ugly duckling to all the world's eyes, but she's truly a treasure just waiting to beheld. OK, hers is slightly harder to swallow: in her versions, it always turns out that she merely appeared to be the ugly duckling; she's actually stunningly beautiful in body as well as mind and soul. Pete concedes the homely face--Barbara does too, with her camera; her screenplay just doesn't acknowledge it--but feels compelled to assure us how beautiful his soul is in spite of appearances.

We know Pete. You had a stunning songwriting career. And some of us enjoyed your voice on some of your solo stuff, too. Rough Mix still ranks up there with my all-time favorites. But this desperate attempt to articulate it for us -- in such awkwardly clunkly language, no less . . . Man, you're just begging us to take the laurels away from you.

I'm so embarassed for the guy, only hope this project sputters and disappears quickly. (It's one of two new songs--the better of the two, presumably?--included in a new greatest hits package.)

But now that I'm done writing this, I feel really sad for the poor guy, too. Man, those kids must have ripped his heart out when he was a boy. Still not over it. A staggering career, decades of adulation, two beautiful daughters (at least they looked hot on that album cover way back when), and the ugly-face demon has still got the poor sucker by the balls. Isn't that what plastic surgeons are for?