Inside Tracks #11: Todd Rundgren💖"Love is the Answer" with Utopia, England Dan & John Ford Coley, Rumer, Keni Burke, Gary Valenciano

A song so universal, many from different parts of the world have related to it, and thus, covered it. A song also so malleable, a variety of approaches have proven successful. A small handful follows.

1. Utopia, “Love is the Answer,” 1977, Bearsville/Warner Bros. Records

Todd Rundgren wrote it, it’s the final track of the Oops! Wrong Planet album, and it’s the only single sprung from the 1977 album, produced by Todd. In many ways, the song is a “typical” pop song, like so many written by the 2021 Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame inductee.

What makes it unique is that it’s here, performed by Todd’s side group, Utopia, once known as a “prog rock” band (from 1973-1975). But, by around 1976, Todd, drummer John “Willie” Wilcox, keyboardist Roger Powell, and bassist Kasim Sultan (clockwise starting with Todd, top left in photo below) had begun to smooth things out a bit, and conformed more to Todd’s melodic side than try to squeeze their square musical pop peg into a Pink Floyd-ish round prog hole. Hence, this universal “feel-good” anthem, which is anything but “typical.”

”Well, it’s funny,” Todd explained to Carl Wiser of Songfacts recently: “We were doing an album at the time, and usually we try and be collaborative when we write the songs, because we had made an agreement that we would share the publishing on all of our songs so that specific writers don’t get the credit.

“But that was a song that I came up with. We put it on a bummer album like Oops! Wrong Planet thinking maybe we need to put something a little hopeful on it.”

”The song still has meaning to me - I perform it every night with Ringo [Starr’s All-Starr Band, which toured regularly starting in 1989, with ever-rotating lineups of star artists].

“Ringo has his ‘three-hit-rule,’” Todd revealed, “and I'm taking advantage of a technicality in that ‘Love Is The Answer’ was a hit, but it wasn't a hit for me or Utopia, it was a hit for England Dan & John Ford Coley.

”Originally, Ringo wanted me to do ‘Hello It’s Me’ (Todd’s Nazz song from 1968, and his solo hit from 1972), and I just felt that the song, in the context of what the rest of the band was playing, didn't represent the message I wanted to convey….

“….Because ‘Hello It’s Me’ is kind of a selfish song. It’s me, me, me – it's all about me. I’m in charge, and all this other stuff. I thought a better song, especially for Mr. Peace And Love – Ringo, himself – would be ‘Love Is The Answer.’

“And people would know the song, because it was a hit. And they maybe even would just gloss over the fact that it wasn't a hit for me and think, ‘Oh, yeah! Now I remember him singing this song!’ So, for me it’s a high point of the evening, and hopefully the audience is getting the message.”

Related: How Todd learned about baseball…his two sons became pro ballplayers:

Hall of Famer Todd Rundgren's Greatest Hits: Rex & Randy Rundgren, 2 Minor League Baseball Players

2. England Dan & John Ford Coley, “Love is the Answer,” 1979, Big Tree/Atlantic Records

Most of America’s radio-listening and record-buying public became familiar with “Love is the Answer” (sung here in a lower key than Todd’s Utopia) from the soft-rock duo of England Dan (Seals, the brother of Seals & Crofts’ Jim) & John Ford Coley.

Their spring 1979 hit from their 7th studio album, Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive (shown below, and produced by Kyle Lehning), reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in May of that year. It also spent two weeks atop Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.

Coley was quoted in Wesley Hyatt’s The Billboard Book of #1 Adult Contemporary Hits (in 1999) as saying: “Of all the songs we released as singles, that was my favorite. The song, first of all, had a classical base, and the middle had a gospel section which I loved.”

3. Rumer, “Love is the Answer,” 2015, Night Owl Music Ltd.

Born in Pakistan in 1979, the British singer-songwriter, Sarah Joyce (known professionally as Rumer, from the British author Rumer Godden), has assembled a long list of superstar fans over the decade-and-a-half of her recording career: Elton John, Burt Bacharach, Carly Simon, and original Squeeze member, Jools Holland.

In fact, in 2010, Elton invited Rumer to be his special guest at his BBC Electric Proms concert (what used to be a London music festival). And, Rumer recorded an album This Girl's In Love: A Bacharach & David Songbook in 2016, which includes, among others, her cover of The Carpenters’ “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” as well as another Bacharach/David chestnut, “What the World Needs Now is Love.”

Bacharach even joins her on vocals on her “This Girl’s in Love With You” take, also providing the piano intro. It’s good to have legendary fans.

Rumer seems to travel, musically, in the softer side of retro-rock’n’pop, rather than the current Auto-tune-driven and disposable assembly-line pop pap, which makes her arrangement the perfect one to follow England Dan & JFC (and she returns the song to Todd’s original higher pitch).

Notably, one of her biggest fans has become Richard Carpenter, who wouldn’t be the first one to notice that Rumer displays a similar vocal timbre to his late, great vocalist sister, Karen Carpenter.

In fact, Rumer received a personal note from Richard regarding her debut album (2010’s Seasons of My Soul, Atlantic Records): “You not only sing beautifully,” wrote Carpenter, “but what you've created is actually musical, something that has been in short supply in recent years. The fact that the album is a sales success, as well, is reassuring to me, as I still firmly believe that if the public is exposed to music that is natural and of high quality, they will respond positively. Congratulations.”

If you ever wanted to imagine what Karen might’ve sounded like singing Todd, close your eyes during her “Love is the Answer” cover (particularly starting with the gospel build 2/3 through…”When you feel afraid….”)!

4. Keni Burke, “Love is the Answer,” 1981, RCA Records

Keni Burke’s “Love is the Answer” comes from his self-produced You’re the Best album in 1981. Burke is a 69-year-old Chicagoan, and with four siblings, made up the 1970s band, The Five Stairsteps. As a member of that group, Burke wrote their first minor hit, “You Waited Too Long” in 1966, but The Five Stairsteps would see their biggest success with the million-selling Stan Vincent song, “O-o-h Child,” on Buddah Records in 1970.

The group went on to sign with George Harrison’s Dark Horse Records in 1975, and had their next hit with the Burke-penned “From Us to You,” from their 1976 album 2nd Resurrection.

An accomplished guitarist and bassist, Burke continued to work for Dark Horse as a session musician, while beginning a solo career of his own. In 1977, he released his self-titled, self-produced debut album on Dark Horse.

Throughout the 1980s and into the ‘90s, Burke continued his session and production work for artists such as Peabo Bryson, The O’Jays, The Jones Girls and Keith Sweat, and in 1998 released his last album to date, Nothin’ but Love, containing the UK hit, “Indigenous Love.”

5. Gary Valenciano, “Love is the Answer,” 2000, Universal Records

Edgardo Jose “Gary V” Santiago Valenciano (Tagalog pronunciation: [valɛnˈʃano]), is a Filipino multi-talented multi-hyphenate born in 1964: Also known as Gary V., he’s a singer-songwriter, dancer, musician, actor, music producer and television host.

He has released 39 albums, and won the Awit Award (basically, the Filipino Grammy) for “Best Male Performer” twelve times. “Awit,” literally, means “song” in Filipino.

Gary is the sixth of seven children of a Filipino dad and a Puerto Rican mom of Italian descent who sang opera in Manila in the ‘60s! His parents met in New York City, married, and settled in Manila.

Valenciano made his first TV appearance in a ‘70s commercial for Fress Gusto, a since-discontinued Filipino soft drink (dates seem to vary; if this was 1975, as the video is labeled, he’d be 11, and is likely the kid at the very end, saying the tag line; if this is ‘78, he’d be the 14-year-old pictured guzzling the drink in the video thumbnail):

Gary’s cover of “Love is the Answer” is from his 2000 album, Revive, his 13th studio album. His repertoire fluctuates from the secular love song to Contemporary Christian/inspirational fare. It’s the latter musical lane that prompted Gary to cover Todd’s song of universal caring and understanding.

At 58, Valenciano realizes he’s no longer a youngster once known as “Mr. Pure Energy.” He struggles daily with Type 1 diabetes (with several close calls), and according to a February 2020 PeopleAsia.ph article, “He has torn his right meniscus [knee cartilage] badly, twice (one in a basketball game in 1992, and the other during a concert in 2006 where he wore the wrong pair of pants and did not slide down smoothly on his knees as planned.)

“However, it was having open heart surgery in May 2018, and inadvertently finding out he had kidney cancer, that served as a wake-up call for him to step on the brakes and rethink life.”

Regardless, Gary just finished an abbreviated US tour, hitting northern California, UCLA’s Royce Hall, Dallas, TX, Anchorage, AK, and New York City, all in October.

Honorable mention: The equally-honorable Rick Springfield, who, at least in one part of the song, chokes up a bit, so taken is he by Todd’s emotional lyrics and music. A trooper and consummate pro, though, he powers through, and dabs his eyes after: