Three sides of one-man-band ultra-auteurism and one side of live-played fake-it-til-you-make-it fuckaround jams: this is how you throw your singer-songwriter weight around. The product of a steady regimen of pot, Ritalin, and an almost blackout automatic knack for writing potential (and realized) hits, Something / Anything? launched Todd Rundgren into the rock genius exosphere right as he was starting to second-guess his own methodology. And while the following year’s experiments of his LP A Wizard, A True Star and his prog squad Utopia meant this double LP might as well have been his farewell to rock convention, it immortalized him in the process. When “the kid gets heavy” (“Black Maria”; “Little Red Lights”) he can breach dimensions most hard rockers didn’t even know existed, and his sentimentality (empathetic kiss-off “Sweeter Memories”; long goodbye “Dust in the Wind”) is only made stronger by his sardonicness (“I Went to the Mirror” and its grotesquerie-of-the-self; the high school rogues’ gallery “Piss Aaron”) And more than that, it’s one of those records you can lay claim to containing The Greatest Power-Pop Song Of All Time, only to start arguments over whether that song is “I Saw the Light” or “Couldn’t I Just Tell You.” As for the Big Hit, Todd’s revamp of his old Nazz cut “Hello It’s Me,” the first and on some days the best song he ever wrote, reinforces his place alongside Laura Nyro and Carole King in the great-pop-minds conversation.

– Nate Patrin