A 2024 Anthony Fantano video, improbably enough, is back in the conversation this week.
By now, your endless scroll has alerted you to the resurfacing of the music critic and The Needle Drop personality’s review of Halsey’s most recent studio album as of this writing, 2024’s The Great Impersonator. While Fantano handed the album “a light to decent 1,” it was otherwise met with largely favorable reviews.
Seemingly, though for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the review in question has received renewed attention amid coverage of Fantano’s recent interview with Olivia Rodrigo, whose excellent new album you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is currently atop the Billboard 200 chart.
Below, we take a closer look.
Anthony Fantano says Halsey’s album exhibits “main character syndrome”
“This entire record has the worst case of main character syndrome I’ve heard on any pop album in 2024,” Fantano said in his review of The Great Impersonator, arguing that the album includes “multiple indulgent cuts that sound like messy demos.”
Ultimately, Fantano, who earlier this year came in at No. 6 on Complex’s Hip-Hop Media Power Ranking, landed on a final score of 1.
“This album was a really tough listen, and frankly, in some pockets, laughable, which is why I’m feeling a light to decent 1 on it,” he said at the time.
Some fans were quick to take issue with Fantano’s assessment of the album, Halsey’s fifth, while pointing to the real-life health scares—i.e., the singer’s systemic lupus erythematosus and T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder diagnoses—that inspired it.
Fantano says treating him like an “evil person” over his review is “a performance in stupidity”
Amid the revived discourse, Fantano poked fun at those who are “more into the review” than the album itself on X. Reiterating this point, he also urged a fan to “prove” the opposite by “mentioning [the album] more than the review.”
Elsewhere, he responded to a mention from Halsey herself by calling her a “queen” and saying that he was “flattered” to be on her radar. Still, he stands by his criticism of The Great Impersonator.
“Nobody has to agree, but acting like I’m the most evil person alive over disliking an album is a performance in stupidity,” he wrote in another X post.
Halsey responds, calling Fantano a “bully”
As Halsey sees it, even her “least memorable” work will have a more sustaining impact than “anything” Fantano has ever done.
“Everything you say is more ‘whiny’ and ‘edgy’ than I was at any point on that album,” she said. “But at least I had the excuse of going through chemo.”
Later, the three-time Grammy nominee offered some clarity on the intentions behind her decision to speak out by zeroing in on Fantano’s “main character syndrome” remark.
“He’s a raised-by-4chan edgelord bully. Yuck,” Halsey wrote.
“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,” she added in another X post. “He validated that fear to thousands of women.”
