Few major artists dare (or are foolish enough) to publicly criticize Taylor Swift, fearing the backlash from her devoted fanbase—or the star herself. Todd Rundgren, however, feels insulated by his reputation as one of rock’s last curmudgeons and has nothing to lose. In a recent, wide‑ranging interview with Vulture’s Devon Ivie, Rundgren discussed his career—from touring with Ringo Starr to his collaborations with former Band members—and eventually turned to his production work on Meat Loaf’s 1977 classic Bat Out of Hell, which he once described as “a spoof of Bruce Springsteen.” He then posed the question: if he were to produce that album today, who would be his target?
“Taylor Swift, of course,” he told Ivie. (Full disclosure: I previously worked with Ivie at Vulture.) “One can argue that she has damaged music. It’s an understandable trend, but to me Swift represents the pinnacle of mediocrity.” Rundgren then veered into a meandering, somewhat ill‑formed theory that today’s top‑selling artists are women because 1990s boys shifted their spending from music to video games. He wondered aloud what the industry would do next, suggesting that marketers turned to young girls with allowances as a new revenue source.
He returned to Swift later in the interview, saying, “Taylor Swift doesn’t do anything especially noteworthy besides grow her hair. She isn’t a great singer, a great songwriter, or a great dancer. She serves as a role model for a generation of young women—and now for their daughters—as mothers and daughters flock to her concerts.”
He added, half‑joking, “Swifties, before you burn your copies of Something/Anything?, feel free to send it my way; I could use a new one.”
