Todd Rundgren: Taylor Swift Ruined Music

Few major artists are willing (dumb enough?) to criticize recent Cleveland devotee Taylor Swift in public, lest they incur the cursed wrath of her loyal fan base (or the pop star herself). However, Todd Rundgren, secure in his status as one of the last great rock curmudgeons, has absolutely nothing to lose. The rock legend recently spoke with Vulture’s Devon Ivie for a winding conversation about his career, from touring with Ringo Starr to his history with various members of the Band. Eventually, talk steered toward Rundgren’s production work on Meat Loaf’s seminal 1977 album Bat Out of Hell, which he has admitted he saw “as a spoof of Bruce Springsteen.” So, if Rundgren produced that album now, who would be his target?“Taylor Swift, of course,” he told Ivie (Full disclosure: I previously worked with Ivie at Vulture.) “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.” Rundgren then went on a winding and extremely nonsensical tangent about how the biggest artists in the world are now women because boys in the ‘90s started spending money on video games instead of music? Not su...