Halsey is refusing to let her pain be silenced by anyone, especially by music critic YouTuber Anthony Fantano.
The American singer-songwriter issued a scathing response to Fantano’s review of her 2024 album, The Great Impersonator, a confessional concept album about Halsey’s health struggles which nearly killed her. But in his review, which was first shared to Fantano’s 3 million subscribers over a year ago, Fantano describes Halsey’s album as having “the worst case of ‘main character syndrome’ I’ve heard on any pop album in 2024.”
Though she initially didn’t respond, Halsey snapped when Fantano doubled down on X over the weekend, claiming his review of the album was more interesting than the album itself.
Halsey responded on Sunday, June 21, writing on X, “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.”
She added, “But at least I had the excuse of going through chemo,” referring to her battle with lupus and a T cell lymphoproliferative disorder.
“Who cares he gave a bad review?” Halsey continued in another post. “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.”
The Bad at Love hitmaker went on to call Fantano “raised-by-4chan edgelord bully.”
To conclude, she reminded readers that “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,” and Fantano “validated that fear to thousands of women” with his review.
