999,861: Todd Rundgren - Slut

Given the sheer scope of Todd Rundgren’s star-making 1972 double LP Something/Anything?, it’s strange and typically perverse (in multiple senses of the word) that he would choose to end the whole affair not with a sweeping, majestic closer, but rather an ode to an aging barfly. “Slut” is a raunchy shuffle with a blaring horn section straight from New Orleans, the city whose whorehouses gave birth to the great American art form of jazz. Where Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters would later croon in “Young Lust” that he needed a dirty woman, with no small measure of self-loathing on his part, Rundgren unabashedly celebrates the joys of same.

Todd seems to have taken his date to a bar where he notices the title protagonist of “Slut” dancing invitingly. He enlists his background singers to help deliver the message to his date that “You put up such a good clean fight/I’m afraid that you lose tonight.” This alters the spirit of the old Mae West quote “Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere” to something more like “Good girls get dumped via singing telegram from guys who are still at the bar, freaking on some drunken hussy right in front of them.” Rundgren then launches into the main chorus, which sounds almost like a cheerleader’s chant in the way it spells out “S-L-U-T” every two lines. The second verse further rubs Rundgren’s date’s nose in it, chastising her for being “so clean, so refined/You don’t care to get messy just to have a good time.” Class, reserve, and even good grooming are apparently not the commodities they once were in the wild dating free-for-all of 1972. Rundgren observes of the new apple of his eye, “She’s got saggy thighs, and baggy eyes/But she loves me in a way I can still recognize.” This couplet underscores the primal, irresistible biological appeal to a male of being selected for mating. It also effectively debunks the American beauty industry (and all the physical insecurities it preys upon) as a billion-dollar sham – at least if a woman’s only goal is to attract a mate. (Seriously, do you know what’s in the Kinsey report? Some dudes fuck LIVESTOCK when no one’s looking. Ladies, you probably don’t need to obsess over eyebrow grooming.) Of course, Rundgren himself was about to enter a glam phase, so it’s not like he had no use for makeup.

In practice, physical affection – however recognizable it may be – is rarely as uncomplicated as choosing the “whore” half of the Madonna/whore dichotomy. We don’t get to hear a “Slut” epilogue with a title like “Awkward Awakening” or “Many Years of Baggage.” (Nor do we know if Rundgren also gets his background singers to help hustle her out of his apartment.) Even so, there is acknowledgment here of the carnal realities of taking up with a slattern – she probably won’t be the looker of your dreams, especially after years of hard living. There is no idealized fantasy here, just dirty grimy sleazy reality, and that’s precisely the focus of Rundgren’s cheeky celebration. Rundgren would deliver the majestic album closer next time out with “Just One Victory,” which – in true contrarian spirit – capped a sonically perverse mindfuck of an album (A Wizard, A True Star) where nearly all of the remaining material was aimed at alienating his newfound pop fan base.

Slut - Todd Rundgren