History Music / ToddRundgren

* JustForPun: In case you somehow didn't get the title of ''Todd Rundgren's Johnson'', he titled the EP version ''[[SelfDeprecation Todd Rundgren's Short Johnson]]''.

He is also known for being an [[FollowTheLeader early adopter and innovator]] in the domains of {{Music Video}}s and use of computers: his video for "Time Heals" was one of the first to be aired on Creator/{{MTV}}, he developed one of the first computer paint programs for the Apple II, Utopia Graphics System, way back in 1981, he was an early adopter of the desktop video program Video Toaster[[note]]the same hardware responsible for most of the CGI in ''Series/BabylonFive''[[/note]] for Amiga in TheNineties, and was one of the first people to distribute his work online, long before iTunes or even Napster, through a subscription service, [=PatroNet=], in the mid-nineties.

** Every song on ''Liars'' is a ProtestSong about some form of untruth Rundgren feels people have accepted in their daily lives, from gender essentialist views of relationships ("Happy Anniversary") to greed ("Mammon") to the present-day state of the music industry ("Soul Brother") to religion ("God Said") to various political topics. However, this is a clear case of Administrivia/TropesAreNotBad, as it's one of his most loved albums since TheEighties.

* ProtestSong: Todd began moving more into this during TheEighties, with songs like Utopia's cover of "For the Love of Money", "Swing to the Right", "Flesh", "Johnee Jingo", and later on, just about all of ''No World Order'', ''The Individualist'', and ''Liars'', as well as parts of ''Arena'', ''State'', and ''Global''. Some of ''Hermit of Mink Hollow'' (i.e., "Bread", "Bag Lady") also qualifies.

* UncommonTime: "Cool Jerk", "Is It My Name?", "Don't You Ever Learn?", "Freak Parade", "Another Life", "Weakness", amongst countless other examples; the use of 7/8 time and other compound meter signatures is one of Rundgren's compositional hallmarks. "Initiation" is a strange example as it's also influenced by {{disco}} (a style which almost always uses nothing but CommonTime, with Music/{{Blondie}}'s "Heart of Glass" being one obvious exception), but nonetheless the meter signature jumps all over the place.

Rundgren returned to the band format through the foundation of Utopia in 1973. In its initial incarnation, Utopia was a six-piece ensemble with Rundgren, Kevin Ellman (percussion), Mark "Moogy" Klingman (keyboards), M. Frog Labat (Jean Yves Labat, synthesizers), Ralph Schukett (keyboards), and John Siegler (bass and cello). Their output was largely formed of [[EpicRocking long]], jammy ProgressiveRock instrumentals that brought a mixed critical reception (however, Utopia's début album, ''Todd Rundgren's Utopia'', was its second-best selling album, only surpassed by ''Adventures in Utopia'', and is considered by many ProgressiveRock fans to be a CultClassic). By 1976, Rundgren revamped Utopia and reduced it to a four-piece band consisting of him, Kasim Sulton (bass, vocals), Roger Powell (keyboards, vocals) and Willie Wilcox (drums, vocals). They also switched to a catchy, mainstream pop/HardRock sound, bringing them critical and commercial success. They carried on for a while, leaning increasingly towards Pop and NewWaveMusic, before calling it a day in 1986.

* CallForward: "La Feel Internacìonále", from 1973's ''A Wizard, a True Star'', contains the line "Wait another year/Utopia is here". The next year, Utopia would release its self-titled début album.

* GratuitousFrench: The reprise of "International Feel" on ''A Wizard, a True Star'' is entitled "Le Feel internacìonále". (This is not actual French, which is presumably deliberate; it's an international ''feel'', not an actual example of internationality.)

* NoEnding: "La Feel Internacìonále" just cuts off without warning.

* {{Bishonen}}: In the Nazz days — also perhaps in the early 70's.

Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American [[SingerSongwriter singer-songwriter]], [[IAmTheBand multi-instrumentalist]] and [[RecordProducer record producer]], known for his eclectic, experimental style, incredibly prolific recording and quirky sense of humor. While he's dabbled in numerous styles and has experimented a lot with his material, he largely operates within a few rock subgenres, namely: PowerPop (coincidentally, the one he made his initial name in), HardRock, ProgressiveRock, Electronic/Club and RAndB (classic [=R&B=]). His [[GenreMashup mix and match musical genres]] approach, dabbling in TrueArtIsIncomprehensible, cult following and emphasis on humour has earned him occasional comparisons to Music/FrankZappa.

* ''We're An American Band'' (1973) and ''Shinin' On'' (1974) by Music/GrandFunkRailroad

* ''New York Dolls'' (1973) by Music/NewYorkDolls.
* ''Music/BatOutOfHell'' (1977) by Music/MeatLoaf.
* ''Music/{{Wave}}'' (1979) by Music/PattiSmith, where Rundgren also did the engineering and plays bass guitar.
* ''Music/{{Skylarking}}'' (1986) by Music/{{XTC}}.

Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American [[SingerSongwriter singer-songwriter]], [[IAmTheBand multi-instrumentalist]] and RecordProducer, known for his eclectic, experimental style, incredibly prolific recording and quirky sense of humour. While he's dabbled in numerous styles and has experimented a lot with his material, he largely operates within a few rock subgenres, namely: PowerPop (coincidentally, the one he made his initial name in), HardRock, ProgressiveRock, Electronic/Club and RAndB (classic [=R&B=]). His [[GenreMashup mix and match musical genres]] approach, dabbling in TrueArtIsIncomprehensible, cult following and emphasis on humour has earned him occasional comparisons to Music/FrankZappa.

-->--"International Feel"

Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American [[SingerSongwriter singer-songwriter]], [[IAmTheBand multi-instrumentalist]] and RecordProducer from Philadelphia, known for his eclectic, experimental style, incredibly prolific recording and quirky sense of humour. While he's dabbled in numerous styles and has experimented a lot with his material, he largely operates within a few rock subgenres, namely: PowerPop (coincidentally, the one he made his initial name in), HardRock, ProgressiveRock, Electronic/Club and RAndB (classic [=R&B=]). His [[GenreMashup mix and match musical genres]] approach, dabbling in TrueArtIsIncomprehensible, cult following and emphasis on humour has earned him occasional comparisons to Music/FrankZappa.

Rundgren started his career as a guitarist/vocalist in the PsychedelicRock band (The) Nazz[[note]]nothing to do with that [[WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy other Nazz]] - their name comes from "The Nazz Are Blue" by Music/TheYardbirds[[/note]], which he founded in 1967 alongside bassist Carson Van Osten, drummer Thom Mooney and keyboardist/vocalist Robert Antoni. Their first album, ''Nazz'', showcased both his arranging and composing talents and the band's heavily derivative, PromotedFanboy sound - they sounded like a cross between Music/TheBeatles, Music/TheWho, Music/{{Cream}} and Music/TheYardbirds. It spawned a minor hit single, "Hello It's Me", and didn't go much anywhere. A planned double album was shortened to a single LP, ''Nazz Nazz'', and released a year later. ''Nazz Nazz'' showed the band somewhat abandoning its psychedelic trappings and concentrating on catchy, if still not too groundbreaking PowerPop. Rundgren left the band shortly after, as his newfound love of Music/CaroleKing, Music/LauraNyro and soul music and the resulting material he was writing didn't fit with the band's PowerPop sound. The band disintegrated shortly thereafter, and an album of the heavily Nyro-influenced material left over from previous sessions was released, imaginatively titled ''Nazz III''. Antoni and Mooney briefly ended up joining Fuse, an extremely early incarnation of Music/CheapTrick which played throughout the Midwest billed either as "Fuse" or "Nazz", before practically vanishing from the music industry.

Rundgren officially began his solo career in 1970, and has been going steady ever since then with his musical mashups and quirky lyrics. While PowerPop and HardRock have remained the basic genres he operates in, at various points he's experimented with PsychedelicRock, ProgressiveRock (between 1973-1976 and with his band Utopia), jazz fusion, NewWaveMusic, {{Soul}}, {{Techno}}, ElectronicMusic and others. Predictably, he has a very sizeable {{Fandom}} but only a few, fleeting moments of mainstream success, most notably the singles "Hello It's Me" (a 1972 upbeat reworking of the Nazz song), "I Saw the Light", "Can We Still Be Friends", "We Gotta Get You a Woman", and "Bang the Drum All Day". (Utopia's best known song is almost certainly either "Love Is the Answer" or "Set Me Free".) His massive output, both solo and with his two bands Nazz and Utopia, can be a frequent source of both ArchivePanic and SeasonalRot.

Alongside his solo career and work with bands, Rundgren is also known as a RecordProducer, having produced albums for such acts as Music/{{Sparks}}, Music/NewYorkDolls, Music/{{Badfinger}}, Music/TheBand, Music/GrandFunkRailroad, Music/MeatLoaf, Bonnie Tyler, Music/PattiSmith, The Tubes, Music/{{XTC}}, Music/BadReligion, Music/CheapTrick, Music/ThePsychedelicFurs, Music/DarylHallAndJohnOates, and so on. Some of the bands have claimed that working with him was difficult and he acted like a JerkAss, most famously XTC, Sparks, and Bad Religion. However, he has also produced many artists' most successful albums, such as XTC's ''Music/{{Skylarking}}'', Grand Funk Railroad's ''We're an American Band'' and Meat Loaf's ''Music/BatOutOfHell'', and even though they consistently argued throughout the album's production, XTC's Andy Partridge later wrote that "Todd conjured up some of the most magical production and arranging conceivable." He has also been known to complete an act's unfinished songs, but decline a writer's credit for doing so.

** Despite this, some of his songs can also verge into... well, NotChristianRock might not be the correct territory, but "Something from Nothing" is about having faith in ''something'' (which could just as easily be an abstract concept such as justice rather than a deity). On the ''other'' hand, an intended interpretation of the song is to ask whether, if all one has is faith, it is possible to know anything for certain. There's rarely only one meaning to any of Todd's songs. Some of his other songs explore spirituality from a serious ("Fair Warning", "Initiation", most of ''Healing'') or not that serious ("Eastern Intrigue") perspective. Finally, Utopia's "Love Is the Answer", while not a religious song, was covered by several gospel and Christian artists.

*** Wiki/ThatOtherWiki has a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deface_the_Music complete list]], though some resemblances are a lot closer than others.

** "Slut" could be a lost [[Music/TheRollingStones Rolling Stones]] song, if it weren't so comedic.

** ''Something/Anything?'' cranks this UpToEleven: each of the four LP sides is in a different style, with the fourth being a mini-RockOpera.[[note]]Side one is described in the liner notes as "a bouquet of ear-catching melodies"; side two is "the cerebral side"; side three is "the kid gets heavy"; side four is "Baby Needs a New Pair of Snakeskin Boots (A Pop Operetta)".[[/note]]

* MisogynySong[=/=]MisandrySong: Outside of the context of Todd's work and especially the album it appears on, "Happy Anniversary" from ''Liars'' might be read as a sincere example of both tropes rather than the sardonic attack on gender essentialism that it actually is. The liner notes help clear this up to a certain extent, as they explicitly say that every song on the album is about some form of dishonesty we've accepted in our daily lives even if it initially seems to be about something else, as does the rest of Todd's work. "Earth Mother" from ''Global'' expresses sincere praise of activists Rosa Parks and Malala Yousafzai for challenging established power structures of racism and patriarchy and can therefore be considered an inversion of the Misogyny Song. "Pissin'" derides an exemplar of toxic masculinity as "a one-man pissing contest". And so on. Some of his earliest work (e.g., "We Gotta Get You a Woman") may erroneously read as vaguely misogynistic, due to grammatical misinterpretation [[note]]"We Gotta Get You A Woman" includes the lines "Talkin' 'bout things about that special one / They may be stupid but they sure are fun", which could mean either that women are "stupid" but "fun", or just that "things ''about''" them might be - WordOfGod is it's the latter, and it's just meant to refer to noticing your partner's endearing quirks[[/note]]

* MisogynySong[=/=]MisandrySong: Outside of the context of Todd's work and especially the album it appears on, "Happy Anniversary" from ''Liars'' might be read as a sincere example of both tropes rather than the sardonic attack on gender essentialism that it actually is. The liner notes help clear this up to a certain extent, as they explicitly say that every song on the album is about some form of dishonesty we've accepted in our daily lives even if it initially seems to be about something else, as does the rest of Todd's work. "Earth Mother" from ''Global'' expresses sincere praise of activists Rosa Parks and Malala Yousafzai for challenging established power structures of racism and patriarchy and can therefore be considered an inversion of the Misogyny Song. "Pissin'" derides an exemplar of toxic masculinity as "a one-man pissing contest". And so on. Some of his earliest work (e.g., "We Gotta Get You a Woman") may erroneously read as vaguely misogynistic, due to grammatical misinterpretation.

Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American [[SingerSongwriter singer-songwriter]], [[IAmTheBand multi-instrumentalist]] and RecordProducer from Philadelphia, known for his [[NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly eclectic, experimental style]], incredibly prolific recording and quirky sense of humour. While he's dabbled in numerous styles and has experimented a lot with his material, he largely operates within a few rock subgenres, namely: PowerPop (coincidentally, the one he made his initial name in), HardRock, ProgressiveRock, Electronic/Club and RAndB (classic [=R&B=]). His [[NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly mix and match musical genres]] approach, dabbling in TrueArtIsIncomprehensible, cult following and emphasis on humour has earned him occasional comparisons to Music/FrankZappa.

* ''Music/SomethingAnything'' (1972; BaroquePop, PowerPop, SingerSongwriter, NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly)
* ''A Wizard, a True Star'' (1973; PsychedelicRock, ProgressiveRock, NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly)
* ''Todd'' (1974; ProgressiveRock, NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly)
* ''Initiation'' (1975; ProgressiveRock, NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly)

* ''Hermit of Mink Hollow'' (1978; NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly)

* ''Nearly Human'' (1989; NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly)

* NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly: ''A Wizard, a True Star'' is psychedelic without a doubt, but it also breaks free of the constraints of any one genre. In 2017, he would describe it as "my act of tyranny after having achieved commercial success. [...] I threw out all the rules of record-making and decided I would try to imprint the chaos in my head onto a record without trying to clean it up for everyone else's benefit." He would continue this experimentation on ''Todd'' and ''Initiation'', which also delved head-first into ProgressiveRock.

!!''"Trying to make a living off an elpee's worth of tropes:"'':

!!Tropes:

** With Utopia, a cover of "Do Ya" by the Move (on ''Another Live'', though better known from Music/ElectricLightOrchestra's version, a rare example of an artist [[CoveredUp Covering Up]] his own song), "Something's Coming" by Music/LeonardBernstein (also on ''Another Live''), and "For the Love of Money" by the O'Jays (on ''Swing to the Right''). (Incidentally, the reason ELO re-recorded "Do Ya" is because a music journalist [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer confused Utopia's version for the original]], so Utopia's version could be considered to have temporarily CoveredUp the song as well).

Discography:

With Nazz:

Solo:

With Utopia:

Notable albums produced by Todd Rundgren:

!Tropes: