Creativity Quote by Todd Rundgren

Rundgren is arguing for a rollback of the album-as-monument era, not out of nostalgia but out of pragmatism. “Singles needed to come back” reads like a creative manifesto disguised as a business note: make songs move at the speed listeners actually live. The line carries a quiet rebuke to an industry that trained fans to wait two or three years for a carefully packaged “cycle,” then act surprised when attention splinters.

The phrasing matters. “Change the rules for myself” signals an artist refusing to let labels, release calendars, or even his own perfectionism dictate the pace. It’s self-management as aesthetic choice: a steady drip of work instead of the grand unveiling. That’s also why he calls it an “online experiment,” a modest term that smuggles in a radical shift. Experiments can fail; they also imply curiosity over control, a posture that fits the early internet moment when musicians were first testing direct-to-fan models.

“Fruits of my labour” frames recordings as ongoing craft rather than rarefied events. The subtext: if you want musicians to keep making things, the audience has to be invited into the process, not just the finished product. The last clause - “people who decided they wanted to support my recordings” - is the real pivot. Rundgren isn’t begging for attention; he’s filtering for commitment. It’s an early, clear-eyed version of patronage culture: fewer gatekeepers, more responsibility on the fan relationship, and a release strategy that treats regularity as respect.