Rundgren Calls Taylor Swift 'Apotheosis of Mediocrity'

In a new Vulture interview, Todd Rundgren says there is an argument Taylor Swift 'ruined music,' even as she keeps breaking records.

Todd Rundgren, the 78-year-old singer-songwriter behind "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw the Light," told New York Magazine's Vulture that "to me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity" and that "there's an argument to be made that she ruined music." Asked which contemporary artist he would parody, as he did with Meat Loaf's *Bat Out of Hell*, he answered instantly: "Taylor Swift, of course." He added she "doesn't do anything particularly great except grow hair," and contrasted her with Lady Gaga, whom he called a "real musician" and classically trained piano player.

The blast landed during a career-defining week for Swift, according to the outlets covering it. Rockum reports that two days after the Vulture interview was published, she won Video of the Year for "The Fate of Ophelia" at the 2026 MTV VMAs, bringing her career total to 33 and making her the most-awarded artist in the show's history. Variety Australia notes her deluxe edition *The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore* broke two Spotify records, with "Patient Zero" the most-streamed song by a female artist in a day this year. Rundgren declared music "ruined"; the streaming counters politely disagreed.

The rocker offered his own, personal explanation for why the era's biggest artists are female, which multiple outlets explicitly framed as his interpretation rather than an established finding. Per Vulture's interview, as relayed by HuffPost and Variety Australia, boys in the 1990s stopped spending allowance money on music and shifted to video games, so labels pivoted to young female listeners, "instead of Pearl Jam or something like that." Rockum notes this represents Rundgren's personal reading of industry changes, not a measured conclusion about Swift's success.

This is not Rundgren's first blast at a legend. The Independent reports his previous targets include John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West, Robbie Robertson and George Harrison — Lennon even answered with a satirical open letter addressed to "Sodd Runtlestuntle" and "Turd Runtgreen." Music Times adds that a 2022 episode of Rick Rubin's Broken Record podcast already discussed why Rundgren regularly turns off Swift's music, showing the new comments continue a view he has publicly held for years rather than a fresh change of heart.

The attack arrives amid mixed reviews of Swift's newest release. According to HuffPost, The Atlantic wrote that "the singer's music once put a clever twist on ideas about aging and adulthood. Now she just seems to be going backwards." Music Times, for its part, points to measurable scale: *The Life of a Showgirl* opened with 4.002 million equivalent album units in the U.S., per Billboard, becoming her 15th No. 1 and spending 12 weeks atop the Billboard 200. Whatever the artistic verdicts, the commercial numbers give context to the size of Rundgren's target.

As of HuffPost's reporting, Swift had not responded publicly to Rundgren's comments, and Music Times calls the exchange decidedly one-sided so far. She has previously told Apple Music's Zane Lowe she has "a lot of respect for people's subjective opinions on art" and is "not the art police," a stance that suggests no rebuttal is coming. Netflix Junkie notes she has joked about mocking critics back with words they must look up in a dictionary first. Rundgren, meanwhile, resumes his Damned If I Do Tour in San Francisco next month with a new solo album in the works.