When I was younger, I always used to confuse Todd Rundgren with Jackson Browne. I don't know why I couldn't tell them apart. I was exposed to both through my parents. I knew one did "Running On Empty," which was noteworthy (to me) mainly for being one of the 300 million pop songs featured in Forrest Gump, and I knew the other did Carole King pastiches that were better than Carole King, but I didn't know which was which.
Fast forward ten years, and I've finally discovered that the latter was much more talented than the former, and that the latter is Todd Rundgren. I decided to check into Todd when I got a copy of XTC's Skylarking (another long overdue purchase) and saw that he was the producer, which piqued my curiosity because I could hardly imagine crusty old fogey Todd Rundgren (for that was what I assumed him to be by 1986) working with hip young whippersnappers like XTC (I know XTC weren't particularly young nor hip when they made Skylarking, but for whatever reason, that's the image I concocted in my head). And wouldn't you know it, Todd Rundgren is actually amazingly talented. He's also from Upper Darby, PA, which got him points right away because I have a lot of Philly pride, or Philly-metropolitan-area pride, I guess.
The album I've been playing on repeat for the past couple weeks is Something/Anything?, which is one of the few double albums I've ever heard that I honestly didn't think needed to be trimmed down into a single album*. This one does contain a few jokey songs, a few gimmick songs, and a few weird experimental songs, but the thing about Todd Rundgren is that it's hard to call anything a throwaway song, because to him, everything is of equal value, and beautiful pop songs like "I Saw the Light" are as likely to be frivolous as a strange early electronic experiment like "Breathless." And there are great liner notes for every song and every side of the album, written by Rundgren himself, which really let his tongue-in-cheek personality shine. And all the more impressive is that 3/4 of the songs were played by Rundgren and Rundgren alone, which make this one of the most impressive one-man-band albums I've ever heard (Side 4 of the album (or the second half of disc 2 for you CD listeners, or... tracks 19-25 for you mp3 people) features a real live band, and that's his faux-operetta, which, it should be obvious, is a huge joke, except with genuinely good songs). It's not just the fact that he did it all by himself, it's the fact that it's so subtle and nuanced, and there are moments when everything sounds so tight that it's hard to imagine it not being played by five different people at the same time. And everything just sounds so great. It's not hard to see why he's such a sought-after producer. He makes Paul McCartney's one-man-band albums sound amateurish (not to take away from brilliant songwriting like "Maybe I'm Amazed" or "Junk," but post-Beatle Macca really has nothing on Todd Rundgren). Even Stevie Wonder rarely put out something so professional and cohesive (Innervisions aside, of course). I will have to seek out some of his other albums. I'm sure my parents have a lot of him on vinyl in their basement waiting for me...
*This really is a short list for me. The only others I can think of off the top of my head are both by Godspeed You Black Emperor! (Lift Yr Skinny Fists... and Yanqui UXO, which I own on 2LP but is apparently on a single CD, so I don't know if that even counts). Exile on Main St, The Wall, Tommy, Bitches Brew, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness? Nope, put 'em on one album! The White Album may be an exception... I'd have to hear it cut down to a single album first.
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