Halsey and Anthony Fantano. Aurore Marechal/Getty Images; YouTube Halsey let loose on Anthony Fantano on Sunday night, describing the popular YouTube music critic as an “4-chan raised edgelord bully” and suggesting that her “least memorable song will be remembered more fondly and for more time than anything you ever do with your life will be.”
Fantano, who runs the YouTube channel The Needle Drop and is the self-described “internet’s busiest music nerd,” has become, somewhat unwillingly, embroiled in “stan Twitter wars” after his interview with Olivia Rodrigo. Many people on social media take issue with the critic over what they think is Fantano’s supposed bias towards female pop artists, and slammed Rodrigo for agreeing to the interview. Halsey fans in particular have long disliked Fantano since his review of the Grammy-nominated singer’s 2024 album The Great Impersonator, which he awarded a “decent 1” out of 10.
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After taking shots from all comers for much of the weekend, Halsey then weighed in. Sunday night’s back and forth started after X user @NotRealMusic tweeted, “I didn’t really agree with how Fantano approached some aspects of his Halsey review but I can’t understand how there’s still discourse about it all this time later. It’s not like it’s some great album… how are people still hung up over it.”
Fantano quote tweeted, “if they’re more into the review than the album 🤭.”
At which point Halsey jumped into the fray. Quote tweeting Fantano, the singer wrote, “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,” she tweeted, a pointed reference to Fantano’s withering but reasoned review of The Great Impersonator, in which the critic described Halsey’s record of having “the worst case of ‘main character syndrome’ I’ve heard on any pop album in 2024.”
Fantano shot back to Halsey, “flattered to be on your radar, queen 🙌.” But then the singer continued her rant into the late night.
“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,” Halsey wrote. “[Fantano is] a raised-by-4chan edgelord bully. Yuck.”
She continued, “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.”
The “Without Me” singer concluded what she had to say by simply tweeting, “That’s all and good luck to this man!”
For context, Fantano also reviewed Halsey’s 2021 album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, which he described as having some of the singer’s “best work ever,” ultimately awarding the album a score of “a light 6” out of 10, which is fairly decent given his exacting standards.
The music critic has had a number of feuds with artists over the years, most famously with Drake, and most recently with Grimes earlier this year. Others to spar with Fantano over his album scores over the years include Logic, Lil Xan, Post Malone, Ronnie Radke, Wale, MGK, Yung Lean, Lil Yachty, Killer Mike, and Tyler, the Creator.
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