The Kids Are Alright" is a song written by Pete Townshend and recorded by the English rock band the Who. It appears as the seventh track on their debut album My Generation (1965).
"The Kids Are Alright" was not released as a single until more than six months after it first appeared on the LP, first in the United States, and in the United Kingdom the following month.
While not a huge hit at the time (reaching number 41 in the UK and number 85 in the US), the song, along with the album "My Generation", became anthems for the band and the Mod subculture of England in the 1960s.
It later became the name of the documentary for the band in 1979. The song was edited for the U.S. single and this version has become much more common than the original full-length U.K. album version. The edit of the song features a substantially shortened instrumental break.
A promotional film for the song was shot in Hyde Park in July or August 1966. In addition to appearing on My Generation, the beginning of the song can be heard on Quadrophenia, after the song "Helpless Dancer" has faded out.
The song uses a standard I-IV-V chord progression in the key of D while the chorus uses a ii-V-IV-I chord progression.
In present-day live performances, The Who add a long extra section to the end of "The Kids Are Alright", with partly improvised lyrics discussing the lessons learned since the song's composition. A version of this can be heard on Live at the Royal Albert Hall, recorded in 2000, in which Townshend assesses:
"When I wrote this song I was nothing but a kid, trying to work out right and wrong through all the things I did. I was kind of practising with my life. I was kind of taking chances in a marriage with my wife. I took some stuff and I drank some booze. There was almost nothing that I didn't try to use. And somehow I'm alright."
After John Entwistle's death, the extra lyrics occasionally made reference to him, and his love of old red wine, which later inspired their song "Old Red Wine", a tribute to Entwistle.
During 2006 the song was listed at No. 34 in Pitchfork's list of the 200 greatest songs of the 1960s.