Todd Rundgren recently claimed that Taylor Swift has “ruined music” along with other female artists, sharing his thoughts in an interview with Vulture.
The musician discussed the current landscape of the music industry and expressed his views on Swift’s talent and success.
“There’s an argument to be made that Taylor Swift ruined music,” Rundgren said. “It’s an understandable phenomenon. It’s just that, to me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity.”
Rundgren went on to explain how shifts in consumer demographics, particularly the rise of video games in the 1990s, changed the music market’s target audience.
“It’s the era of the female artists,” he continued. “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?'”
He also shared his specific critique of Swift’s skills as a performer and artist.
“Taylor Swift doesn’t do anything particularly great except grow hair,” Rundgren added. “She’s not a great singer. She’s not a great songwriter. She’s not a great dancer.”
Swift has not yet publicly responded to Rundgren’s comments.
Rundgren’s remarks arrive after more than five decades in the music business, a career that has moved between performance, production, and technology. He was born and raised in Philadelphia, formed the band The Nazz as a teenager, and launched his solo career in 1969.
His 1972 double album “Something/Anything?” made him a star after he played all the instruments, sang all the vocals, and produced the record himself. The same source notes that he went on to form the group Utopia in 1974 and helped pioneer a more interactive approach to live performance and recording.
His work behind the boards has been just as influential. Rundgren became known as a producer and studio innovator, working on albums by artists including Meat Loaf, Badfinger, the Band, and XTC. He also released “Time Heals,” the first music video to combine computer graphics and live action, which later became the second video ever played on MTV.
Rundgren has consistently pushed at the edges of how music reaches an audience. He organized the world’s first interactive television concert in 1978, during which home audiences could choose which songs would be played.
His peers have recognized that body of work over the years. He received a Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award from the Popular Culture Society at UC Berkeley in 1995, and in 2017 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music, where he delivered the commencement address.
