everyone is wrong about Anthony Fantano

Anthony Fantano is also called melon. you're not supposed to take him seriously. that's the bit, and the comments under any of his music review videos will testify. but every once in a while, the tone of the comments changes. people get VERY MAD at melon. for a guy that has “y’all know this is just my opinion, right?” in the description of every video of his, the internet cares a lot about his ‘opinions’. astrologers are yet to forecast these events but this time around, i think there were signs.

Olivia Rodrigo released “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love” exactly two weeks ago. it’s the type of record that is bound to instantly earn classic status- a beloved pop star’s first ‘mature’ album. it was unlikely that the internet (some speculate that Swifities, in particular) were going to let this album cycle pass with just the initial hue and cry about babydoll dresses. her melon interview may seem like an unlikely target, but it checks out. let me explain.

what people dug up was not about Olivia at all but melon’s two year old review of the last Halsey album, The Great Impersonator. Halsey wrote that record when she thought she was dying. in addition to the sickness, her record label dropped her & her husband left her to raise a toddler on her own. each song on the album was inspired by a cultural icon, from David Bowie to Bjork & in the marketing campaign leading upto the album release, she posted photoshoots ‘impersonating’ each of these artists. 5 out of the 9 minutes of his review, he spends annoyed about this. that's when we get the sense that what melon hates the most about this album seems to be halsey’s audacity to reference these ‘great’ artists. as he descends further into his mockery of the record, he says the thing that really pissed everyone off- that the album is so self centered it reads like Main Character Syndrome. apart from just being an extremely dick-ly thing to say about someone struggling with life-threatening illness, the backlash was quick to point out that this was only one example of melon’s general track record of judging female artists harsher. i, for one, am still pissed about the Fetch The Bolt Cutters review. but maybe i’m biased.

digging up this review two years later, seems a little ill-timed at face value, but it checks out. Halsey got on twitter to call melon a “raised-by-4chan edgelord bully”. & as left of the spectrum he seems to be today, she's not wrong. melon’s brand, melon’s followers, the very culture that birthed him owes itself to the internet alt-right. & that is inherent in his format- irony, hot-takes delivered matter of factly, and in effect, nothing more than a superficial engagement with the music he claims to review.

i’m going to go on a tangent here to make a recommendation- @AJayLush on YouTube. AJay post videos of her live reactions listening to albums for the first time. AJay can burst into tears because of the intro of a song, pick up a hook and sing along, scream from the depths of her gut, and allow the internet to witness her through all this. she doesn't post as much as she used to but i bring this up as a comparison. melon also streams videos of himself listening to new music & i’m not expecting him to have the expressive power of a black woman but you can see it on his face. he doesn't really care about the music.

in his defence, melon says, “it has nothing to do with Halsey being a woman.” that he has “no problem with enjoying and supporting the work of women, especially women who address serious issues in their work.” it seems like he's suggesting Halsey’s issues weren't serious enough. which is rich coming from him. who made him arbitrar of what issues are serious? in light of all this, it seems even stranger that he's rooting for Olivia Rodrigo, queen of the petty. confessional pop as a genre, from Swift to Halsey, is known for its vulnerability. exactly the kind of thing him and his boys club of music nerds could never appreciate.

it's actually incredible that Swifties found exactly this point of contradiction in Olivia Rodrigo’s melon interview. and all this has one very simple reason- Olivia is a genius. Olivia's music has always taken a punk twist on pop. her references to rock music were impossible to miss from the start, but they come to the foreground on this album, from namedropping Just Like Heaven to the Robert Smith feature, she knew exactly what she was doing. & it's executed with precision. it's exactly the kind of album you could quietly promote on an Anthony Fantano Interview because even the boys can't refute its genius. there's atleast 500 videos on YouTube right now of grown men crying to the album. she sat all giggly through that interview and left the internet with this stalemate.

melon said, in response to the backlash, “i have been the most relevant and impactful music critic of my — and any — generation for over 10 years now. and if I die tomorrow, nobody’s going to outdo that run.”

who has Main Character Syndrome again?

what does it even mean to be a critic than simply be excited to talk about art. everyone's a critic (not derogatory). more than anyone, it should excite a critic that the fanbase of an artist is offering you more context for an album. melon somehow ends up spiralling trying to defend his position, claiming his review was not about her sickness and suffering when the question in the first place is- how could it not be?

the answer is simple, once again- melon is not a ‘critic’. he has no interest in actually furthering conversations about art. because to do that, you have to account for the circumstances which produced the art. the function of people like him, at best, is to recommend new music to a wider audience, and at its worst, mass produce circlejerks of judgement that fools call taste.