Todd Rundgren has called Taylor Swift the “apotheosis of mediocrity” and suggested she “ruined music” in a new interview.
Speaking to Vulture, the veteran producer was asked which current artist he would spoof if he made a parody album, a nod to his work on Meat Loaf’s 1977 album Bat Out of Hell, which he has said he intended partly as a Bruce Springsteen send-up.
“Taylor Swift, of course. There’s an argument to be made that she ruined music,” he said. “It’s just that, to me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity.”
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
He went further later in the interview. “Taylor Swift doesn’t do anything particularly great except grow hair,” he said. “She’s not a great singer. She’s not a great songwriter. She’s not a great dancer.”
Rundgren praised Lady Gaga as a “real musician” and “classically trained piano player,” and floated a theory that female pop stars rose to dominance after young men shifted their spending to video games in the 1990s. It isn’t the first time he’s criticized Swift — he made similar comments on Rick Rubin’s Broken Record podcast in 2022.
Swift hasn’t responded. When The Life of a Showgirl drew mixed reactions on its release last year, she addressed the criticism on Apple Music’s The Zane Lowe Show.
“I have a lot of respect for people’s subjective opinions on art. I’m not the art police,” she said. “Everybody is allowed to feel exactly how they want.”
The comments arrive days after Swift released The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, an expanded edition of her 2025 album featuring four new tracks, including “Patient Zero.” Swift premiered the song’s music video during Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards 2026.
The deluxe version of Swift’s 12th studio album, out now, also features the newly recorded song “Babylon,” “Pink Clouding” and “Cleveland!” The original album spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and opened with a record-breaking 4.002 million equivalent album units in the United States in its first week.
