one Asian under a groove

While Something/Anything?, Rundgren’s one album with a hit rate high enough to accumulate goodwill, towers over everything else he ever did, that doesn’t mean it has most of his good songs. His major problem during his peak was quality control: the gems were outnumbered by the generic, and he wasn’t an original enough lyricist or singer to get away with generic.

Twenty favourites (including his pre-solo Philadephians pretending to be Londoners trying to sound American group, Nazz):

1. I Saw the Light
2. Couldn’t I Just Tell You
3. Hello It’s Me (Something/Anything? version)
4. Nazz: Open My Eyes
5. I’m in the Clique
6. Parole
7. Heavy Metal Kids
8. Love of the Common Man
9. It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference
10. Onomatopoeia
11. Nazz: See What You Can Be
12. Bang the Drum All Day
13. We Gotta Get You a Woman
14. Piss Aaron
15. Izzat Love?
16. International Feel
17. It Takes Two to Tango
18. Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel
19. A Dream Goes on Forever
20. Nazz: Rain Rider

The Obligatory Spotify Playlist omits the Nazz songs.

Albums in order of preference:

• Something/Anything?
• (big gap)
• (seriously, nothing else is close)
• Todd
• Nazz
• A Wizard, a True Star
• Runt
• The Ballad of Todd Rundgren
• Hermit of Mink Hollow
• Faithful
• Nazz Nazz

For further research: Synth-prog ain’t my bag, so someone else can work through Utopia’s catalog.