TODD RUNDGREN

Can We Still Be Friends

written and produced by Todd Rundgren

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I am making this page on June 23rd, 2021, the day after the 73rd

birthday of Todd Harry Rundgren. Happy Birthday, TR!!

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“Hello, It’s” Todd Rundgren, The Individualist himself, originally

from Philadelphia, PA. Todd’s yet another artist who is still going

well into the 21st century and 2020s, with a career reaching just over half a century long now. It helped that like many others, he too got started very young, around the age of 20, establishing Bearsville Studios, engineering its artists and founding it as his label.

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While still a teenager, Todd wrote the entirety of two albums he recorded with psychedelic band Nazz, to close out the ’60s. As the 1970s rolled in, he wrote, recorded and produced his own debut solo album, Runt. Each subsequent album brought in one or two additional singles, most of which charted in the top 100. His biggest hit was the Something/Anything? record’s “Hello It’s Me,” a song originally with Nazz as a slow ballad, and a bit more up-tempo solo, but still ballad-style. It wasn’t released as a single until fall 1973, a year and a half after its record came out. But it nailed #5 on Billboard and #2 on Cashbox.

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The first Rundgren song I collected was an ’80s number, “Bang The Drum All Day,” released on record at the tail end of ’82 and singled in April ’83. I got it on a Flashback budget compilation called Sports Rock, and I’m almost a bit embarrassed to say that it was one of the only songs on that package I was totally unfamiliar with. (I did know Todd’s name, however.) In between those two hits, however—almost precisely in between, mathematically—came “Can We Still Be Friends.”

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As I’m willing to bet most of my generation were, I became acquainted with “Can We Still Be Friends” through the at first dubious-seeming but ultimately self-proving Farrelly Brothers directorial debut Dumb And Dumber, which Todd scored. So he snuck in his own song “Friends” toward the end. Fortuitously, it was at a point in the film where the song’s lyrics were quite applicable to the storyline. So having that established, I was pleased to “score” the song on a 1978 compilation a few years later on. Six years after Todd’s version, Rod Stewart covered it on his hit Camouflage record.

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Have notes to add? Let me know!

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YT:

full version

music video

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Todd’s official website

Lyrics

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We can’t play this game anymore, but / Can we still be friends / Things just can’t go on like before, but / Can we still be friends / We had something to learn / Now it’s time for the wheel to turn (oooh-oooh oooh-oooh) / Grains of sand, one by one / Before you know it, all gone / Let’s admit we made a mistake, but / Can we still be friends (can we still be friends) / Heartbreak’s never easy to take, but / Can we still be friends (can we still be friends) / It’s a strange, sad affair / Sometimes seems like we just don’t care (oooh-oooh-oooh-oooh) / Don’t waste time feeling hurt / We’ve been through hell together / (La-la-la la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la) / x6 / (La, la, la, la) / (La la la la, la la la la la) / (Can we still be friends) Can we still get together sometime / (La la la la, la la la la la) / (Can we still be friends) You know life will still go on and on and on and on / We awoke from our dream / Things are not always what they seem / Memories linger on / It’s like a sweet, sad old song / x7/[fade]

first release: Hermit Of Mink Hollow (1978/05)