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Few major artists are willing (dumb?) enough to criticize recent Cleveland devotee<\/a> Taylor Swift<\/a> in public, lest they incur the cursed wrath of her loyal fan base (or the pop star herself<\/a>). 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<\/a> with Vulture\u2019s 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\u2019s production work on Meat Loaf\u2019s seminal 1977 album Bat Out of Hell<\/em>, which he has admitted<\/a> he saw \u201cas a spoof of Bruce Springsteen.\u201d So, if Rundgren produced that album now, who would be his target?<\/p>\n \u201cTaylor Swift, of course,\u201d he told Ivie (Full disclosure: I previously worked with Ivie at Vulture.) \u201cThere\u2019s an argument to be made that she ruined music. It\u2019s an understandable phenomenon. It\u2019s just that, to me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity.\u201d 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 \u201890s started spending money on video games instead of music? Not sure about that one, Todd! \u201cThat left the music market with, \u2018Well, where do we go here?\u2019\u201d said Rundgren. \u201cAnd they said, \u2018Well, there\u2019s all these young girls and they\u2019ve got their allowances, too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n By the end of his reply, he had again brought it back to Swift: \u201cTaylor Swift doesn\u2019t do anything particularly great except grow hair,\u201d he added. \u201cShe\u2019s not a great singer. She\u2019s not a great songwriter. She\u2019s not a great dancer. She\u2019s a role model for what was a very young generation of women, and now for those women\u2019s daughters as well, because it\u2019s mothers and daughters going to Taylor Swift shows.\u201d<\/p>\n