A Wizard, a True Star by Todd Rundgren

A Wizard, a True Star, Todd Rundgren's fourth studio album, hit the racks on Bearsville on March 2, 1973, and anybody expecting another Something/Anything? got their head rewired instead. Rundgren had been dabbling in psychedelics and tuning in to the noise inside his own skull, and he came back with nineteen tracks jammed onto one disc, close to 56 minutes of it, every cut spilling into the next like a trip with no exits. He produced it, engineered it and played most of it himself.

It opens in pure chaos and winds up in a medley of the soul tunes he loved, with "Just One Victory" ringing out like a rallying cry. He talked up utopian ideals at the time and later shrugged that it meant nothing in particular. No singles, on purpose. Critics swooned, buyers bailed, and he figured he'd lost about half his audience. The bedroom-studio tinkerers who came later took careful notes.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.