Todd Rundgren Says There’s an Argument Taylor Swift “Ruined Music.”
by Chrissy Stockton · Thought CatalogUpdated 3 hours ago, September 29, 2026
Todd Rundgren has a candidate in mind if he ever makes another parody album — and he isn’t being shy about it. Asked in a Vulture interview which musician he’d target today, the singer-songwriter and producer behind “Hello It’s Me” and “I Saw the Light” answered without hesitation: “Taylor Swift, of course.” Then he went further: “There’s an argument to be made that she ruined music. It’s an understandable phenomenon.”
Rundgren didn’t stop at the one-liner. He called Swift “the apotheosis of mediocrity,” and laid out a theory for how the industry got here: by his account, labels began targeting young girls after boys shifted their spending from music to video games in the 1990s. It’s not the first time he’s framed his work as a jab at a peer, either — he has said his production of Meat Loaf’s 1977 album “Bat Out of Hell” was partly an attempt to make fun of Bruce Springsteen.
The timing is hard to miss. Rundgren’s remarks followed the release of Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore,” which has been anything but a flop. Its song “Patient Zero” set Spotify’s 2026 record for the most streams in a day by a female artist’s song, while Swift herself set the platform’s 2026 single-day record for a female artist. She also picked up the inaugural Artist-Director Award at the Sept. 27 MTV VMAs.
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