Twitter Fights Are Back!

Excited and terrified to announce that after a brief hiatus of pretending we were all mature adults, Twitter fights are officially back! I was beginning to fear we were all above this. We’re not! Hooray!

The latest Twitter duel ignited Sunday between Halsey and music reviewer Anthony Fantano of “The Needle Drop” over a scathing review of her 2024 album, The Great Impersonator, in which he scored the album 1/10, and through algorithmic dark Twitter magic, the review was somehow resurrected into discourse.

Despite being over a year old, Halsey fans have remained upset about the review ever since—their main gripe being Fantano’s patronizing manner of discussing Halsey’s battle with cancer, and at one point he jokes that Halsey had “main character syndrome.” 

The tweet that started it:

if they’re more into the review than the album 🤭 https://t.co/T0khBcyoiq

— NO CONTEXT anthony fantano (@theneedledrop) June 21, 2026

The response:

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. https://t.co/h2dFzOqpKH

— halsey (@halsey) June 21, 2026

The response to the response:

flattered to be on your radar, queen 🙌

— NO CONTEXT anthony fantano (@theneedledrop) June 21, 2026

Negative 100000 points for saying “queen.” Halsey then responded with even more responses defending her album and going harder on Fantano, calling him a “raised-by-4chan edgelord bully. Yuck.”

On Monday, this Twitter exchange made it out of the app and into the hands of real journalists after Fantano provided a lengthy comment to Variety. In his conversation with the outlet, Fantano defended his review and maintained that he is definitely not a 4chan edgelord—he supports both Bernie and Zohran, thank you very much. His style may be edgy, but he “never said anything as edgy as an accidental 9/11 joke at Pitchfork’s expense, which [Halsey] very notably did.”

In 2020, after receiving a 6.5 from Pitchfork on her 2020 album Manic, Halsey tweeted, “Can the basement that they run Pitchfork out of just collapse already.”

“Apparently, Halsey was not aware that Pitchfork operated out of One World Trade Center in New York City, the very building that was meant to replace the Twin Towers after 9/11,” wrote Marlow Stern of Variety.

The best pull quote from the conversation with the outlet has to be the conclusion, where Fantano reveals his grand ideas of himself: “I don’t have to prove my track record to Halsey. I have been the most relevant and impactful music critic of my — and any — generation for over 10 years now. You can’t really debate that. There’s no music critic bigger than me who’s had more impact than me for as long as I have, consistently. And if I die tomorrow, nobody’s going to outdo that run.” I think the main character syndrome is in the room with us.

While today’s Twitter fight will inevitably become tomorrow’s forgotten Twitter fight, the debate remains: Should musicians let bad critiques lie? Can music reviewers on YouTube become so self-important that their critiques are moot? Are we just all just flesh, blood, and fragile egos? Many questions. Zero answers. Till the next Twitter fight.