Halsey unleashed on Anthony Fantano on Sunday night, calling the popular YouTube music critic a “bully raised by 4chan” and suggesting that her “unforgettable song will be remembered more fondly and longer than anything you ever do in your life.”
Fantano, who runs the YouTube channel The Needle Drop and describes himself as “the busiest music geek on the internet,” became embroiled, albeit somewhat unwillingly, in “Twitter wars” after his interview with Olivia Rodrigo. Several people on social media disagreed with the critic over what they believed to be Fantano’s supposed bias toward female pop artists, and criticized Rodrigo for agreeing to the interview. Halsey’s fans in particular have long hated Fantano since his review of the singer’s Grammy-nominated 2024 album. The great imitatorwhich received a “decent 1” out of 10.
After taking photos from all comers for most of the weekend, Halsey then commented. Sunday night’s back-and-forth began after
Fantano tweeted a quote, “If they care more about the review than the album 🤭.”
At this point Halsey jumped into the fray. “I’m sure my unforgettable song will be remembered more fondly and longer than anything you do in your life,” the singer wrote on Twitter.
“All you say is more ‘whiny’ and ‘irritable’ than I was at any point on this album. But at least I had an excuse to go through chemo,” she tweeted, in an apparent reference to Fantano’s withering but reasoned review of The great imitatorwhere the critic described Halsey’s record as suffering from “the worst case of ‘main character syndrome’ I’ve heard on any pop album in 2024.”
Fantano responded to Halsey, saying, “Happy to be on your radar queen 🙌.” But then the singer continued screaming until late into the night.
“Who cares that he gave a bad review? I care that a YouTuber who pays for clicks can pose as a professional critic and say it’s ‘main character syndrome’ for an artist lamenting her medical struggles in an album (surprise!) about her private life,” Halsey wrote. “[Fantano is] Bully raised by 4chan edgelord. disgusting.
She continued, “Being a woman dealing with serious health issues often means being afraid to tell the truth about the pain you’re experiencing because you’re afraid you won’t be believed or come across as attention-seeking. This fear has been validated for thousands of women.”
The “Without Me” singer concluded her statement with a simple tweet: “That’s all, and we wish this man good luck!”
For context, Fantano also reviewed Halsey’s 2021 album, If I can’t have love, I want powerwhich he described as containing some of the singer’s “best work ever”, ultimately giving the album a score of “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 who have competed 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.
