History Music / ToddRundgren

* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: Can go anywhere from a 1 ("Torch Song", "I Don't Want to Tie You Down") to about a 6 ("Is It My Name?", "Heavy Metal Kids", "Everybody's Going to Heaven/King Kong Reggae", "The Death of Rock and Roll", "Gun").

* AscendedFanboy: Musically speaking, his early Nazz output is largely a game of {{Follow The Lead|er}} of his favourite bands (Music/TheWho, Music/TheBeatles, Music/{{Cream}} and Music/TheYardbirds, mostly).

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, Badfinger, Music/TheBand, Music/GrandFunkRailroad, Music/MeatLoaf, Bonnie Tyler, Music/PattiSmith, The Tubes, Music/{{XTC}}, Music/BadReligion, Music/CheapTrick, The Psychedelic Furs, Hall and Oates, 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.

* ''A Wizard, a True Star'' (1973; PsychedelicRock, NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly)

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: the album ''A cappella'', named for an Italian phrase meaning "without instruments," involves no instruments whatever, just Rundgren as a SelfBackingVocalist via lots of overdubbing and sampling.

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, Badfinger, Music/TheBand, Music/GrandFunkRailroad, Music/MeatLoaf, Bonnie Tyler, Music/PattiSmith, The Tubes, Music/{{XTC}}, Music/BadReligion, Music/CheapTrick, The Psychedelic Furs, Hall and Oates, 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."

* NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly: ''A Wizard, a True Star'' is psychedelic without a doubt, but it also breaks free of the constraints of any one genre. He would continue this experimentation on ''Todd'' and ''Initiation'', which also delved head-first into ProgressiveRock.
* NewSoundAlbum: Almost every one of them.

* TakeThat: "Rock and Roll Pussy" is a shot at Music/JohnLennon, whom Rundgren perceived as something of a limousine liberal.

* AffectionateParody: The Utopia album ''Deface the Music'' is largely a parody of Music/TheBeatles, from their early Merseybeat incarnation up to their trippy PsychedelicRock stuff.

->"International Feel"

** 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 TropesAreNotBad, as it's one of his most loved albums since TheEighties.

* {{Dude Looks Like A Lady}}/LongHairedPrettyBoy: Definitely in the earlier stages of his solo career, as shown on [[https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiatdewot7jAhUZfX0KHWRLAJYQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amoeba.com%2Fbox-o-todd-cd-todd-rundgren%2Falbums%2F3807431%2F&psig=AOvVaw26pL8A1ICCYBF7vHteTxfU&ust=1564631798068898 this cover of the box set Box O' Todd]] (see {{Bishonen}} above).

* DudeLooksLikeALady/LongHairedPrettyBoy: Definitely in the earlier stages of his solo career, as shown on [[https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiatdewot7jAhUZfX0KHWRLAJYQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amoeba.com%2Fbox-o-todd-cd-todd-rundgren%2Falbums%2F3807431%2F&psig=AOvVaw26pL8A1ICCYBF7vHteTxfU&ust=1564631798068898 this cover of the box set Box O' Todd]] (see {{Bishonen}} above).

* ForWantOfANail: "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Want]] [[CaptainObvious of a Nail]]".

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, Badfinger, Music/TheBand, Music/GrandFunkRailroad, Music/MeatLoaf, Bonnie Tyler, Music/PattiSmith, The Tubes, Music/{{XTC}}, Music/BadReligion, Music/CheapTrick, The Psychedelic Furs, Hall and Oates, 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, for many bands their most successful albums have been produced by him, as is the case with XTC (''Music/{{Skylarking}}''), Grand Funk Railroad (''We're an American Band'') and Meat Loaf (''Music/BatOutOfHell'').

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

** ''Deface the Music'' is a loose one, as every song is an AffectionateParody of some period of Music/TheBeatles' career, though there is no overarching lyrical theme.

** Utopia's ''Deface the Music'' is a whole ''album'' of these. It's composed entirely of [[AffectionateParody Affectionate Parodies]] of Beatles songs, similar to Music/TheRutles' music, and as with Music/TheRutles, a listener could be forgiven for thinking these are lost Beatles songs (although the production sounds like a product of of the 1980s - maybe it was a Beatles reunion from an alternate universe where Music/JohnLennon didn't die). It should be noted that Utopia don't do dead-on Beatles vocal impersonations as the Rutles did, however.

** His 1975 album ''Initiation'' was a retort to his fans who wanted him to ditch the synthesizers and Buddhist symbolism that had crept into his crunchy rock sound. Instead, he went on for 68 full minutes about it, telling his fans that he was a "Real Man" "Born to Synthesize", and taunting them to follow him or lose him forever. This ended with the 35-minute synth freakout that closed the album, named after a book by occult author Alice Bailey (who also inspired the Music/VelvetUnderground's "Music/WhiteLightWhiteHeat") and containing movements named after the seven chakras. How compelling a person finds all this is likely to hinge in large part upon their feelings about ProgressiveRock.

** This is far from being an exhaustive list; on some of his mid-'70s albums, more songs exceeded six minutes than didn't. (On the first Utopia album, only one song was ''less'' than ten minutes long; the album has only four songs despite running for nearly an hour).

* ForWantOfANail: "The Want of a Nail".

* HipHop: Some of the songs on ''No World Order'' and ''The Individualist'' delve into this a bit, believe it or not, and they don't even qualify as PissTakeRap; Rundgren's flow is actually pretty good. ("Fascist Christ", one of the examples, also gets a live version on the bonus disc of ''State''.)

* ShoutOut: Quite a few. ''Todd'' alone has "Sons of [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]", "In and out the Chakras We Go (Formerly: Film/{{Shaft}} Goes to Outer Space)", and "Everybody's Going to Heaven[=/=]Film/KingKong Reggae", and that's just song titles. One song on ''A Wizard, a True Star'' has shout-outs to Creator/SalvadorDali ''and'' UsefulNotes/{{Dada}} in its title alone.

** His 1975 album ''Initiation'' was a retort to his fans who wanted him to ditch the synthesizers and Buddhist symbolism that had crept into his crunchy rock sound. Instead, he went on for 68 full minutes about it, telling his fans that he was a "Real Man" "Born to Synthesize", and taunting them to follow him or lose him forever. This ended with the 35-minute synth freakout that closed the album, named after a book by occult author Alice Bailey (who also inspired the Music/VelvetUnderground's "Music/WhiteLightWhiteHeat") and containing movements named after the seven chakras.

* 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 read as vaguely misogynistic to modern audiences, due to grammatical misinterpretation.

* 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". "Real Man" is in part about how one should not allow oneself to be defined by traditional gender roles. And so on. Some of his earliest work (e.g., "We Gotta Get You a Woman") may read as vaguely misogynistic to modern audiences but is more likely an example of FairForItsDay.

** "Never Never Land" from the ''Theatre/PeterPan'' musical (from ''A Wizard, a True Star'')

Notable albums produced by Todd Rundgren