Adventures in Utopia by Utopia

Adventures in Utopia, the fourth studio album from Todd Rundgren's band Utopia, came out on Bearsville Records, and by Rundgren's account it had been sitting finished since the summer of 1979, waiting for a record company to put it out. The settled quartet of Rundgren, Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell and John "Willie" Wilcox wrote, played and produced every note of it themselves, and it was meant to soundtrack a TV show they were planning; they cut it somewhere with video gear, but the pilot never got made.

What's left is the sound of a prog band loosening its tie. The long-form wizardry gives way to mainstream rock, sleek pop and even a disco pulse, and it won over both the faithful and a much wider crowd. "Set Me Free", sung by Sulton with "Umbrella Man" on the flip, became Utopia's only Top 40 single in the US.

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