Genius is a trap

I have a theory. There are people who play music, and then there are people for whom the music instinct is so encoded in their DNA that they may as well be a separate human subspecies. They crop up throughout history—Mozart, John Cage, Prince, countless unfamous people who toil away in city squares. I think it's fair to put Todd Rundgren in this category. Which may explain why his career is so frustrating.

Like Prince, he's prodigiously talented. Hooks flow right out of him. He can play every instrument on an album and engineer it too. At the same time, the bad-to-good music ratio is kind of appalling. He seems almost bored with his ability. Like a math prodigy at the chalkboard, there's a distinct lack of joy. Nothing like the Eureka! of musicians who seem struck by a singular inspiration and spend years working it out. So with Rundgren, you get a lot of detours and strange decisions that sound like they were made mainly to keep himself awake.

That said, his A Capella album, made with just voice (and I guess stomping and clapping for drums), is a surprising triumph. It's a genre experiment, but the strictures highlight a key strength — his awesome voice and the fact that it gets awesomer the more it's layered. I'm not sure how serious he's being with politics in this track (what with the Irish accent), but it soars and haunts on a scale that fits Rundgren's talent.

Todd Rundgren - Johnee Jingo