The Thin Line of Criticism and Hate
Unfair reviews, letting your biases show & the importance of constructive criticism
I’ve noticed a trend in the younger generations of being unable to discern constructive criticism from hate.
If you ever say anything even remotely negative about something, then you’re automatically being a hater. Even if you still have positive things to say, it doesn’t matter. Because if you criticise it in any way, then you must hate it. This is a problem. Constructive criticism is so important, because without it, we can’t improve. If you only ever hear compliments about your work, then you won’t know the things you can do to make your work even better. It’s good to look at things with a critical eye, even the things we enjoy.
When I write about my favourite books, or albums, or whatever on Substack, I always try to bring a nuanced perspective and provide at least some critiques so I’m not just showering it with flattery. And vice versa — if I’m discussing something I don’t particularly like, I still try to highlight its strengths instead of just harping on about its weaknesses. No single piece of art is perfect, and I think that’s one of the great things about art. As it turns out, many seem to disagree with this.
Over the last few years, it’s become increasingly popular in stan culture to never say anything negative about the things you like. If you know anything about me, then you know I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan. All it takes is one scroll through my Substack archive to see that. So naturally, I spend a lot of time in Swiftie spaces online. I’ll be the first to admit that Swifties can be very toxic sometimes. There’s a large portion of the fanbase that places Taylor on a pedestal and acts like she’s a perfect being who can do no wrong and won’t allow anything even slightly negative or critical to be said about her.
This is problematic in many ways because, first of all, Taylor Swift is a human being. No single human being is perfect nor should you expect them to be. Everyone has flaws; everyone makes mistakes. Do I like and agree with every single thing Taylor has ever said or done? No. Do I like every single song or music video she’s ever put out? No. Does that make me any less of a fan? No.
There are multiple controversial figures in the Swiftverse who aren’t afraid to critcise Taylor, and they get flamed for it. The best example would be Swiftologist, who runs a YouTube channel mostly dedicated to Taylor. Some of his notable controversial takes are that Midnights didn’t deserve to win Album of the Year at the Grammys, it’s bad that Taylor Swift is a billionaire, and that it’s okay to still stream the non-Taylor’s Versions. Rest assured, he is a Swiftie — he’s been a fan since the original Fearless era, he’s met her three times, and he attended 13 Eras Tour shows. Yet many Swifties love to accuse him of actually hating Taylor because he’s not afraid to critique her.
Another quite polarising figure in the Swiftverse is HTHaze, who has a popular music reaction channel. A lot of Swifties will accuse him of using Taylor for clout because he’s honest in his reactions to her music. If he doesn’t like a song, he will make it known he doesn’t like that song. A lot of Swifties hate this, but he’s well within his right to have his own opinion. At the end of the day, he’s a music reviewer. Music reviewers are supposed to be honest. Overall, I have a huge amount of respect for people like Swiftologist and HTHaze because they’re not afraid to be honest in an environment where certain people will send you death threats for doing so. To be clear, this isn’t just a Swiftie problem. I see this sort of behaviour across all sorts of fanbases. Fandom culture in general has gotten so toxic over the last few years.
So if it’s okay to say negative things and it be considered constructive criticism, at what point does criticism become hate? Well, it’s a thin line to walk. In the same way people can confuse criticism for hate, you can also confuse hate for criticism. This sort of thing doesn’t just happen in the world of pop culture, it happens in real life too. People will say hateful things under the guise of it being “constructive criticism.” If someone starts a sentence with “no offence, but…” then you know damn well they’re about to say the most offensive thing someone’s ever said about you straight to your face.
Here’s a tip: if you know someone who makes being “brutally honest” a part of their personality — run. No Susan, it’s not brutally honest to tell me my hair looks bad or my outfit is unflattering, it’s just mean. The fact that you said you’re “just being honest” doesn’t make it any less mean. We talk a lot about unsolicited advice, well I thinnk unsolicited honesty is just as bad. If I wanted to know whether or not my outfit was flattering Susan, I would’ve asked.
Mini tangent aside, it can be hard to determine when criticism turns into hate. I am now going to talk about Anthony Fantano, otherwise known as The Needle Drop. If you don’t know who he is, he’s a popular music critic on YouTube and some people treat his music opinions like they’re the word of god and the epitome of taste. He’s been in hot water a couple times this year, namely for some comments he made about both Taylor Swift and more recently, Halsey.
I used to like this guy. I was never a hardcore fan, but I used to like tuning into his reviews every now and again. Fantano has never been a huge Taylor fan, but he’s spoken positively about multiple albums of hers, like folklore and evermore, and even Lover, weirdly enough. However, his reviews of both Reputation and Midnights are quite scathing. He actively disliked both of those records. He’s also always held a grudge against 1989 because it won over Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly for AOTY at the Grammys in 2016. But even though I completely disagree with many of his takes (especially on Reputation), I always respected his opinion because his reviews were still fair. That is, until his review of The Tortured Poets Department.
I’m not by any means a professional reviewer, but even I know the most important thing when writing a review is to be fair. You cannot be biased, you cannot let your personal vandettas show, and you should always try to go into a project with an open mind. I’ve seen instances of book reviewers basically ruining their own careers by publishing blatantly unfair reviews. When I was watching Fantano’s two reviews that he did for Tortured Poets, it appeared to me like he was purposefully trying as hard as he could to dislike the album by nitpicking even the tiniest details and exaggerating it, just so he could have another reason to shit on the album. It was so obvious to me that he went into the album having already decided he didn’t like it.
Which is something a music critic shouldn’t do. When I listen to a new album, even if I have a sneaking suspicion I won’t like it, I always try to go into it with an open mind. If you go into something with your mind already set on disliking that thing, then chances are, you’re going to dislike it. In other words, a bias.
Some of Fantano’s criticisms in his review were simply ridiculous. He called The Black Dog creepy and stalkerish. He laughed at the line, “You said normal girls were boring, but you were gone by the morning,” in The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, saying that Taylor should take a hint, when the entire point of that line is that Taylor did take a hint and was offended by it. He said I Can Do it With a Broken Heart was a predictable concept based on the song title, even though song titles are supposed to give an insight into what the song is about.
Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? went completely over his head, and while I can understand the hyperbolic tone of that song isn’t for everyone, what didn’t sit right with me was his comment on the line, “if you wanted me dead, you should’ve just said it,” to which he replied, “no one wants you dead, Taylor.” Even though it is well documented that throughout her entire career, there have been dozens, if not hundreds of men that have not only wanted to but have actually tried to seriously harm Taylor.
That comment wasn’t just unfair, it was downright misogynistic. Saying with full seriousness that no one wants Taylor Swift dead is the opinion of a naive and ignorant man. Sure, no one wants her dead, it’s purely a coincidence that since 2018, six men have been arrested or even jailed for trying, and in one case succeding, to break into her home, or by sending her hundreds of threatening letters. What do you think they wanted to do, Anthony? Shake her hand? Tell her they’re a huge fan of her music? No, they wanted to inflict serious harm on her. This is an opinion that Fantano himself even doubled down on when he was called out for it.
It goes without saying I came out of Fantano’s review of Tortured Poets having lost essentially all of my belief in his ability to deliver a fair and unbiased review. To be perfectly clear, I’m not saying he had to like the album. Some of his criticisms were valid, like the fact that she didn’t have a distinctly different sonic approach with the production for this record and that she should really try to work with different producers for her next project. I actually agree with that statement. But unfortunately, the majority of his criticisms were, in my eyes, unfair.
However, it doesn’t end there. Earlier this year, Taylor was getting flamed online for “blocking” other artists from number 1 by releasing live performances from Tortured Poets the same week. Most notably, she did this the week Charli xcx’s BRAT charted and BRAT ended up peaking at number 2 on the UK charts and number 3 on the US charts. The same thing happened with Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, which peaked at number 2. This sparked online outrage. Everyone on Twitter and Reddit were writing think pieces about how much of a power-hungry narcissist Taylor was for… *checks notes* doing her job.
When this happened, Anthony Fantano made a video bitching about it called “Taylor Swift is petty,” in which he says her actions “reek of desperation,” and states that she has a “total lack of shame too as she seems to just not be pumping the breaks at all on shoving this record down everyone’s throat.” He admits in the video that Billie and Charli had both released multiple variants as well, but for some reason, it only reeks of desperation when Taylor does it?
The claim that Taylor releasing a variant the week of Brat is what blocked it from reaching number 1 isn’t something that’s up for debate, it has literally been proven to be incorrect. The numbers show that even if Taylor hadn’t relased anything that week, Brat still wouldn’t have performed well enough to dethrone Tortured Poets at number 1.
Personally, I found the whole “chart blocking” nonsense to be ridiculous. The music industry is a competitive industry. It’s not just Taylor who tries to keep her album charting for as long as possible, everyone does that. In fact, Charli and Billie actually released more vinyl variants this year than Taylor did. Billie had 8 vinyl variants for Hit Me Hard and Soft and there were 12 different Brat vinyls; in comparison, there were only 5 vinyl variants for Tortured Poets. That’s a detail Fantano conveniently forgot to include in his video.
The Tortured Poets Department charted at number 1 for 12 consecutive weeks. It was temporarily overthrown for 2 weeks, before coming back to number 1 for another 3 weeks, making it a total of 15 weeks at number 1 on the Billboard charts. For comparison, the second best charting album of 2024 is Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, which only charted at number 1 for 3 weeks, just to emphasise how impressive Taylor’s 15 weeks is. So when people on Twitter and Anthony Fantano claim that no one is listening to this album, that’s how I know that’s not true. By a long shot, The Tortured Poets Department is undeniably the most listened to album of 2024.
Just a few weeks ago, Fantano reposted a tweet responding to the announcement that Ariana Grande would be a feature on Charli xcx’s Brat collaboration album, with the tweet saying that Taylor would bitterly release another 100 variants to thwart it.
Yes, Brat summer undeniably had its moment, but the commercial success of Tortured Poets has been significantly larger than that of Brat. If anyone here is bitter, it’s Fantano. When you’re a music critic that reposts stan Twitter hate tweets that clearly shows your bias against one artist and in favour of another, you lose a bit of legitimacy and validity to your music criticisms.
But Anthony Fantano’s review of Taylor’s latest project isn’t nearly as unfair as his recent review of Halsey’s new album, The Great Impersonator. For context, Halsey has had a rough few years; they’ve been diagnosed with lupus, endometriosis, and also a rare type of blood cancer — three very serious and life-altering conditions. In the leadup to this record, Halsey stated that they thought this album would be their last. The record deals with heavy themes such as coming to terms with potentially dying and leaving your family behind, processing childhood trauma, and the hardships of sickness. Suffice to say, it’s quite dark lyrically.
Fantano just recently covered the record on his channel and it’s gotten quite a lot of backlash. He spends majority of the video bagging out the marketing of the album rather than talking about the actual music, and his analysis of the music itself is quite shallow. It’s also apparent he didn’t do much research on the project beforehand. But the comment that has gotten people up in flames was him saying that on the record, Halsey is suffering from “main character syndrome.” On top of that, he also says that the songs are filled with “childish angst,” and that Halsey is constantly trying to remind the audience they’re “dark and tortured and edgy.” After this, he rated the album a 1/10.
People have been quick to point out how insensitive these comments are. Hopefully I don’t need to explain why saying that someone who battled cancer has main character syndrome is problematic. Even a lot of Fantano’s fans in the comments agreed that his review not only missed the mark on being critical and analytical, it was unabashedly mean-sprited.
Another review of The Great Impersonator that has been under the microscope is the one by Pitchfork, which was written by Shaad D’Souza, who gave the album a 4.8 out of 10. While Shaad’s review is certainly more fair and generous in comparison to Fantano’s, it still contained some comments that rubbed people the wrong way, like saying that Halsey was trying to “conjure a sense of victimhood,” and “make some listeners feel bad for not exhalting her genius.”
The terms ‘victimhood’ and ‘playing the victim’ are ones that are thrown around far too loosely these days, as well as so many other “therapy talk” buzzwords (gaslighting, narcissist, intrusive thoughts, bed rotting, I could go on…) Victim complexes are absolutely real things that people can have, but writing songs for your own record about your own life experiences is hardly trying to make yourself out to be a victim. I would actually argue that Halsey is a victim. Just because Halsey suffered a lot in their personal life, doesn’t mean you have to like the album and can’t criticise it. That would be just as unfair. But I think the reviews by Fantano and D’Souza are two clear examples of music critics showing their bias.
Reviews are all about finding balance. Balance between critique and praise. That is the distinction between reviews that are tasteful and reviews that aren’t. Reviews that are almost entirely negative are lacking in nuance just as much as reviews that are almost entirely positive.
The last thing I want to talk about is Sarah Chapelle. Since 2011, she’s run a blog called “Taylor Swift Style.” Whenever Taylor wears a new outfit, she tracks down the designer and where it came from, as well as provides commentary on the outfit. Just this year, she released a book, Taylor Swift Style, following the fashion evolution of Taylor throughout her career. This past week, she had a hoard of Swifties burning her at the stake because there’s a section of the book called “Bloopers: Seven Times Taylor Should’ve Said No,” in which she picks out seven outfits Taylor’s worn over the years and gives a sarcastic description on why she doesn’t like it. Some Swifties online took issue with this and a bunch of out of context screenshots from the book spread around. This didn’t surprise me, because as I said earlier, there’s a whole subsection of Swifties who won’t allow anything critical to be said about Taylor.
Some Swifties even started bombarding the book on Goodreads with 1 star ratings and bad reviews. One person I saw clearly made a Goodreads account for the sole purpose of leaving a bad review. It got to the point where Goodreads had to temporarily ban people from leaving ratings or reviews. This is what it currently looks like when you try to rate the book:
Yes, out of context some of the comments Sarah made could be considerd mean-spirited, like saying that the blue romper she wore to the pre-Grammys Gala in 2015 made her look like a “disgruntled toddler in too-small clothes on picture day.”
Which is why context is important. Sarah has been a Taylor Swift fan since 2006. She states within the opening page of the book that Taylor feels like something of a big sister to her. Taylor knows about Sarah; she invited her to the 1989 secret sessions in 2014. A large majority of the book is complimentary towards Taylor’s fashion sense. It’s clear to me she wasn’t trying to be mean with her critiques, she was trying to be humorous. Yes, she’s a Swiftie, but she’s also a professional journalist; if she wrote an entire book with only compliments towards Taylor and no critiques of her fashion at all, then there wouldn’t be much integrity to her writing. None of these Swifties complaining online would be able to convince me that out of the hundreds of outfits Taylor’s worn across the two decades of her career, they think all of them were winners.
I’m aware this piece probably seems somewhat contradictory at times. Really, what it all comes down to is media literacy. Art, in all shapes and forms, is multi-faceted and complex. I don’t think it’s possible to have a full understanding of something without looking at it with a somewhat critical eye. Constructive criticism is important. Trying to remain fair and open-minded is also important. They don’t have to cancel each other out.