Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn. Time now for a segment we call the song that changed

my life. A chance for musicians and artists to tell us about the music that made them

who they are. And today we've got Todd Rungren.

Todd Rungren is a soft rock superstar like on 1972's Something Anything.

And the man is a fun pop singer too. We all like bang on the drum all day, right?

He's a rock and roll hall of fame. He's recorded dozens of his own albums, produced dozens

more for acts like XTC, Hall of Notes, Sparks and others. At 74 years old, he's still doing

it all. He just released a live album called The Individualist, A True Star Live.

When we asked Todd Rungren about the song that changed his life, he told us about a bunch

of possibilities. But eventually he landed on one of the most iconic and most improbable

hit rock songs of all time. Louis Louis by The Kingsman. Here's Todd Rungren.

Hi everybody. This is Todd Rungren. We're talking about a song that changed my life. Maybe

not the song, but definitely a song that had a big impact on me and in my opinion a big

impact on music in general. And in a way I'm sort of haunted by this song. I believe

the first time I ever heard Louis Louis was probably I was in junior high school or high

school. And my avocation had nothing to do with school. I just wanted to have a band.

And early on we had to learn, oh 15 or 20 minutes worth of material. One of our salvation

was the song Louis Louis because it was so simple to learn. It didn't have a whole lot

of parts to it. It also was unintelligible from a lyrical standpoint which meant that anybody

could just get up there and fake their way through it. I have heard rumors that there are

certain songs Louis Louis being amongst them in which the unintelligibleness of the lyrics

...