Halsey and her fans’ outrage over an old album review is showing no signs of fading.
On Sunday evening, after music critic/content creator Anthony Fantano made a snarky comment about his review of Halsey’s album “The Great Impersonator,” the pop singer took to Twitter to quote-tweet him and unload on “The Needle Drop” host, writing, “I’m certain my least memorable song will be remembered more fondly and for more time than anything you ever do with your life will be” and insinuating that he gave her a negative review because he’s a misogynist “raised-by-4chan edgelord bully [culture]”:
I’m certain my least memorable song will be remembered more fondly and for more time than anything you ever do with your life will be. Everything you say is more “whiny” and “edgy” than I was at any point on that album. But at least I had the excuse of going through chemo. https://t.co/h2dFzOqpKH
Who cares he gave a bad review? I care that a pay for clicks reaction YouTuber can facade as a pro critic and say it’s “main character syndrome” for an artist to lament her medical suffering on an album (surprise!) about her own life. He’s a raised-by-4chan edgelord bully. Yuck.
Being a woman dealing with serious health issues often means being afraid of telling the truth about the pain you’re in because you’re afraid of not being believed or seeming attention seeking. He validated that fear to thousands of women.
Some context: On Oct. 29, 2024, Fantano posted a 9-minute video to his YouTube channel “The Needle Drop” critiquing Halsey’s “The Great Impersonator,” which was inspired by her cancer battle. It was a rough review, with Fantano saying the tracks “seem like bad Halloween costumes, musically-speaking”; describing it as “stale, 2000s pop-rock vibes” that are “the sort of songs you only remember for their association with various teen flicks throughout the ‘90s and 2000s”; accusing the album of exhibiting “main-character syndrome”; and ultimately giving it 1 out of 10 grade.
Reached by phone on Monday, Fantano had plenty to say about the online dust-up.
“We’re talking about a two-year-old review here where I’ve remained mostly silent on the reception of the review, despite the fact that Halsey and her fans, for the duration of that time, have pushed the narrative that I disliked the album — or said in my assessment of the album that there was a ‘self-centeredness’ about it — because she was sick,” he offers to Variety. “That I specifically attacked this album and tore it apart because there’s some cartoonishly evil characteristic about me that somehow just singled this album out because of who she is or the illness that she suffered during that time in her life that inspired the record, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”
According to Fantano, his assessment of “The Great Impersonator” had nothing to do with the real-life pain and suffering Halsey endured, but “everything to do with how bad I feel her various takes on inspirations that she tries to pull from and impersonate are, and how weak the songwriting is.”
He also wants everyone to know that, despite what Halsey’s fans may think of him, he’s not the devil.
“You don’t have to agree with me… But one thing I can’t stand by and allow to happen is this performative act where people want to act like I’m Satan incarnate for not liking this album, which I’m not. I’m not the devil himself for not enjoying this album. On top of that, it has nothing to do with Halsey being a woman. There are countless women whose projects I’ve championed over the years. I have no problem with enjoying and supporting the work of women, especially women who address serious issues in their work.”
Fantano proceeded to describe to me how he’s “withstood waves of harassment” from Adin Ross’s edgelord fandom for standing up for Doechii in light of his misogynistic attacks on her, as well as Tory Lanez fans for standing up for Megan Thee Stallion after he shot her.
As far as Halsey’s comment that Fantano was “raised-by-4chan edgelord bully [culture],” she may be referring to an article in The Fader from 2017 (that has since been taken down) about Fantano’s since-deleted YouTube account thatistheplan, wherein he posted videos like “pepe the frog triggers Hillary Clinton,” and “I CHANGED MY GENDER CUZ DONALD TRUMP.”
Fantano insists he’s “not a professional edgelord” but a leftist who supports Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, and “was calling [Israel’s attacks on Palestinians] a ‘genocide’ before even Bernie was.”
“I don’t think I’m singularly alone in having found some early-2010s internet-edgy humor funny, or in a satirical way reviewing some memes on the internet as a joke,” he explains, adding, “I’ve never said anything as edgy as an accidental 9/11 joke at Pitchfork’s expense, which [Halsey] very notably did.”
Yes, after Pitchfork gave Halsey’s 2020 album “Manic” a 6.5/10, the singer tweeted, “can the basement that they run p*tchfork out of just collapse already.” Apparently, Halsey was not aware that Pitchfork operated out of One World Traded Center in New York City, the very building that was meant to replace the Twin Towers after 9/11. When people began pointing that out to her, she deleted the tweet and wrote that it was “clearly a misunderstanding.”
In Halsey’s defense, Fantano is an internet provocateur whose initial tweet that people were “more into the review than the album” appeared to set the musician off, and his reviews can come off as patronizing. But Fantano feels that Halsey is dead wrong when it comes to his own legacy.
“I don’t have to prove my track record to Halsey,” he maintains. “I have been the most relevant and impactful music critic of my — and any — generation for over 10 years now. You can’t really debate that. There’s no music critic bigger than me who’s had more impact than me for as long as I have, consistently. And if I die tomorrow, nobody’s going to outdo that run.”
