![]() Todd’s last notable hit was “Bang The Drum All Day” from The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect. ![]() His own work seemed to stabilize as well: Faithful and particularly Hermit of Mink Hollow marked a return to form. In the second half of the 70s, Todd became an increasingly sought-after producer. Around this time, Todd also formed a band, Utopia, to pursue progressive rock structures, although the group gradually shifted to new wave/rock. You could find a great pop song and a side-long treatise on the spirit world on the same album (cf. The albums that immediately followed were both tantalizing and excruciating. One of the more confounding aspects of Rundgren is that he rarely does the same thing twice. ![]() The records contain some of his most recognizable hits, including “I Saw The Light” and a reworked version of “ Hello It’s Me.” Although the early Runt albums hinted at Rundgren’s protean pop smarts, Something/Anything? is a testament to its creator’s genius that few have equalled in the annals of rock and roll. Ridding himself of the Runt moniker, Todd released Something/Anything?, a double-album DIY masterpiece that still stands as his magnum opus. “ We Gotta Get You A Woman” gave him a legitimate hit, although it hasn’t aged particularly well. Both Runt and The Ballad of Todd Rundgren featured pop/rock songs in the same general vein as Carole King and Laura Nyro but with more testosterone. The story of Todd starts in The Nazz, a short-lived pop group that had a minor hit with the first version of “Hello It’s Me.” After the group split, Rundgren formed Runt, a front for his solo career. He might just as well have been the greatest producer of our age if he had focused on that exclusively, but focus clearly wasn’t his (focus). Incidentally, I don’t personally buy into the missed popportunity angle. ![]() Instead, pop songwriting occupied about 25% of his mind, with the remaining three-quarters reserved for experimental stuff, progressive rock (via Utopia) and production work. ![]() There are those people who would tell you that Todd Rundgren could have been the greatest pop songwriter of our age if he’d had half a mind to do it. ![]()
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