Todd Rundgren Surprised to Find Himself Becoming Hollywood’s Needle-Drop Du Jour, From ‘And Just Like That…’ to ‘Ozark’

variety.com:

A.D. Amorosi Start a conversation with Todd Rundgren about his sudden wealth of needle drops within the last 10 months —  including the multiple interpretations of his 1973 hit “Hello It’s Me” as performed throughout the first season of HBO Max’s “And Just Like That…,” or the use of “I Saw the Light” in “Ozark” — and before the question is out, Rundgren is laughing.“I find it as unusual as everyone else does,” says Rundgren from Denver, before another night of playing with friend Daryl Hall during that latter’s current solo tour. “I can’t figure out what’s going on, as to why there’s sudden interest in my music, and that era in particular.”The era of which Rundgren speaks is his early 1970s output.

That’s when the one-time psychedelic pop songwriter-guitarist from the Nazz went solo and achieved cosmopolitan, blue-eyed soul heights with 1970’s “We Gotta Get You a Woman” and 1972’s double-album magnum opus, “Something/Anything?” — featuring hits in “I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me” — before moving into sophisticated, influential synth-pop with 1973’s “A Wizard, A True Star.” It’s not as if Rundgren’s music hasn’t been used in the past, as he penned the score to 1994’s “Dumb & Dumber,” and has found his tracks in projects from Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” and “Vanilla Sky” to a 2005 episode of “The Office” to the 2015 “Grand Theft Auto V” video game.But, since last year, that “particular era” of Rundgren’s contagious pop prowess had found its way into director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza,” CNBC’s daytime newscast, “Morning Joe,” and Netflix’s current No.