Look out! Here comes the cult-beloved rock legend Todd Rundgren, and he's got takes! Rundgren has never been shy about sharing his opinions. In 2021, for instance, Rundgren said that he wasn't attending his own Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction because it "would just be hypocritical." (He'd already called it a "scam.") If Rundgren had been in the building that night, he would've seen Taylor Swift cover and induct Carole King, but he wasn't, so he didn't. Now, Rundgren would like to talk that shit.
Todd Rundgren recently did a long interview with Vulture. Writer Devon Ivie brought up Rundgren's production of the Meat Loaf classic Bat Out Of Hell: "You said at the time that you didn’t care if it succeeded or not because you just wanted to make fun of Bruce Springsteen." (This gets funnier when you consider how many E Street Band members played on that LP.) Ivie continued, "If you produced an album in 2026 to make fun of an artist, who would be your target?" Good question! Here's Rundgren's answer:
Taylor Swift, of course. There’s an argument to be made that she ruined music. It’s an understandable phenomenon. It’s just that, to me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity. It’s the era of the female artists. The biggest artists in the world are female artists at this point, and that’s because of video games. Back in the ’90s, boys stopped spending money on music and started spending it on video games, and that left the music market with, “Well, where do we go here?” And they said, “Well, there’s all these young girls and they’ve got their allowances, too. Why don’t we start making music for young girls instead of Pearl Jam or something like that?”
So you got Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Pink, and many artists of that ilk. Lady Gaga, she’s a real musician. She’s a classically trained piano player. Taylor Swift doesn’t do anything particularly great except grow hair. She’s not a great singer. She’s not a great songwriter. She’s not a great dancer. She’s a role model for what was a very young generation of women, and now for those women’s daughters as well, because it’s mothers and daughters going to Taylor Swift shows.
Amazing. The thing about video games? Come on. I could read Rundgren's historical theories all day. Rundgren is 78 years old and perhaps unaware of how certain fans will react when a prominent public figure throws dirt on your name like that. Or maybe he doesn't care! Either way, great! (I obviously disagree with Rundgren's feelings about Taylor Swift, but it's been a long time since an elder figure did anything but genuflect at her feet.)
Elsewhere in the interview, Rundgren also pops off Swift's buddy Paul McCartney: "Ringo was maybe the only one who survived the Beatles. All the other guys had some sort of issues they had to deal with. Paul McCartney, even today, is so afraid that people forget who he is that he’ll show up at a mall opening." Beautiful. Rundgren is not too fond of the IRS, either. The whole interview is a great read, and it's here.
As it happens, Taylor Swift has four new songs out today. Nobody asked my opinion, but I'll just say that I think three of those songs are pretty good, and one of them, "Cleveland!," is an absolute fucking embarrassment that's among the worst things she's ever written.
