Todd Rundgren blasts Taylor Swift’s musical legacy: “She ruined music”

Asked point-blank which artist he’d spoof if he made an album designed to mock someone, Todd Rundgren didn’t pause. In a new interview with Vulture, he zeroed in on Taylor Swift and dropped a grad-school zinger while he was at it.

“To me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity.”

He doubled down a beat later: “There’s an argument to be made that she ruined music. It’s an understandable phenomenon.”

Rundgren sketched out that “phenomenon” as a ’90s market shift: boys, he said, started spending more on video games than music, so labels chased the listeners still shelling out their allowance—teen girls—and built the modern pop machine around them. In that frame, it’s no surprise to him that the biggest acts today are women, but he argued Swift isn’t exceptional at any one thing—beyond, as he put it, her image.

He contrasted her with Lady Gaga, whom he praised as a real musician, and pointed to his own history of pointed pastiche. Rundgren recalled producing Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” with a winking nod toward Bruce Springsteen—proof, in his telling, that he’s no stranger to taking the air out of an icon by turning their sound against them.

• Called Swift “the apotheosis of mediocrity”
• Said “there’s an argument” she “ruined music”
• Blamed a ’90s pivot to video games for labels courting teen girls
• Knocked Swift’s artistry while praising Lady Gaga
• Cited “Bat Out of Hell” as a past example of playful provocation

Swift’s playbook for critics

Swift hasn’t addressed Rundgren’s volley, but she’s been open about how she handles detractors. In a recent Grammy Museum Icon Sessions talk, she said she largely dodges the comments section and sometimes fires back in the music itself—leaning on razor-edged lyrics and even the occasional ten-dollar word to make critics reach for a dictionary before they clap back.

That approach has already shown up on tracks like “Blank Space ” and “Anti-Hero,” which flip media caricatures into pop hooks. As Rundgren debates the state of pop from the road, Swift’s method remains the same: turn the noise into a chorus and move on.

Rundgren made the remarks in his interview with Vulture.