Who's Next was the Who's fifth album, released on July 31, 1971 in the United States and August 25, 1971 in the United Kingdom.

The album cover is a photograph taken at Easington Colliery, the band apparently having just urinated on a large concrete piling protruding from a slag heap and zipping their fly's. Though according to the photographer Ethan A. Russell, most of the members were unable to urinate, so rainwater was tipped from an empty film canister to create the desired effect.

It has been suggested the photo is as a reference to the monolith discovered on the moon in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was released in 1968.