Hello It's Me

When starting a blog about music, what better song to start with than Todd Rundgren's Hello It's Me?

To those of you who don't know me, my name is Ed McGonigal, and I have been blogging for almost 13 years, covering topics like politics, football, and finances. But through it all, I have always enjoyed writing about one of my passions, which is music. While I did some deejaying in my younger days, I cannot claim any kind of special musical education, or even musical background, other than I have listened to nearly every genre of music, enjoying most music, loving some music, and despising others. (You can visit some of my previous blogs here and here.)

Lately, I have been feeling the urge to blog again, but I needed a good topic. Politics has devolved into verbal professional wrestling, financial writing is nothing more than self-promotion, and football has become more about politics than the game itself (kneeling and White House visits are more important than the games). So that leaves my other passion, music. Fortunately, there is plenty of music to discuss without entering into the silliness of politics (Will Rogers said it best: "...all Politics is Apple Sauce.")

But enough about me. Back to Rundgren's song.

Hello It's Me was first recorded and released in 1968 by Rundgren's band Nazz. But it never went anywhere until he re-recorded it with a more uptempo solo version in 1971, which was released in 1973. This time, the song reached number 5 on the U.S. Billboard charts.

Even more surprising about this song was Rundgren's inspiration. According to one Puremusic interview, Rundgren said,

"...the main influence for "Hello It's Me" was an eight bar intro that Jimmy Smith played on a recording of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." He had this whole sort of block chord thing that he did to set up the intro of the song. I tried to capture those changes, and those changes became what are the changes underneath "Hello It's Me." I then had to come up with melody and words, but the changes are actually almost lifted literally from something that was, from Jimmy Smith's standpoint, a throwaway."



Overall, Hello It's Me isn't terrible, but also isn't exceptional for any reason either. The lyrics are inoffensive, with only the tune to salvage it. But in this day and age, that kind of song still stands out, because it sings to us without preaching a message. There isn't an ounce of politics in it.

I won't promise to keep this blog a "no politics zone", but it will always be secondary to the music, when it is mentioned at all. Ars gratia artis, first and foremost. So let's enjoy some music together, shall we?


Citation: Except where linked, all information was from Wikipedia.