Also wild because what, you think someone becomes an actual billionaire WITHOUT working with or associating themselves with people leagues worse than the fuckin Needle Drop guy??? Completely delusional, but yea going off track so that's all I need on it lol
a lotta men who are music critics hate women. like thrres a ton of misogyny embedded within what is critically acclaimed.. p4k wouldnt touch pop music til it become cool for hipsters to like pop. and someone like Ronald McDonald follows doesnt create trends
He’s on Twitch right now still talking about her and complaining about her ego (I refuse to watch but it’s what I just read on Reddit), this is after Variety reached out to him on the phone earlier today and he made this insane comment: https://variety.com/2026/music/news...rd-youtube-the-great-impersonator-1236787577/
Like..he’s not worth the attention, I think we all know this but the reality is he does have a platform and should be continuously called out for this, especially since he was the one who brought her/the review back up in the first place. This man is 40 years old acting like this by the way. Insanely childish behavior from someone that old.
It's weird because I thought he seemed like he was getting slightly better in recent years on things and now he just tosses all that progress away to get so hung up and double down on this. Truly easy to just take the L, you can still dislike the album and realize the main character syndrome comment was out of place.
Huh I might be in the minority here, but I’m siding with Ronald McDonald on this one. It seems like halseys fans came at him first and then he responded, and then she responded and he followed. Additionally, as far as I saw she began attacking his character first, which really wasn’t called for. Music critics are there to do that, criticize music and review it. If he didn’t like an album or a song, he’s fully entitled to do such, especially since people clearly do value his opinion. Whether you agree with that or not is up to you. Artists are also entitled to be upset with reviewers that don’t like their music, but that’s the same as being upset with someone for having a different opinion than yours. Saying he doesn’t support women in music or hates them is just an ad hominem. He has clearly supported lots of women, of various genres even putting many fans on to tons of indie and smaller artists. Even if he didnt fully “get” the narrative behind said album, doesn’t take away from the fact that he was sharing his opinion on her body of work.
I think the unfortunate truth before getting into either of their reactions to each other is that 1) this was manufactured out of bad faith by another fanbase who subsequently stoked the flames and 2) this is likely beneficial for both of them in terms of views/streams. I know it made me revisit the album last night. Ronald McDonald having an ego is the least surprising update imaginable and Halsey would do themselves a favor if they stopped engaging with critics at all. But I understand that's easier said than done when it's something so personal.
Sorry but I don't buy this reasoning in this case. This seems like a cop out considering how dismissive he's shown to be towards Halsey's work and the narrative surrounding this particular album. What makes it worse is how patronizing he continues to be in reaction to this stupid discourse that, again, Halsey didn't deserve to be involved in due to stans of another fanbase acting in bad faith.
idk there's levels to misogyny. like you can be a misogynist who flat out doesn't listen to or support women artists in general but you can also be dehumanizing and infantilizing womens work if they dont meet standards that you've decided. i.e. intelligence and craftsmanship as patriarchal ideals rather than music as a subjective experience that invokes feelings in the listener. i dont think halsey is the greatest, most articulate artist but that doesn't detract from my enjoyment of her music and work. its literally pop music its more about a sense of fun and making u feel something. tldr; dudes love feeling smart
Bingo. I would never say Halsey has Main Character Syndrome because they wrote an album about their serious medical issues. I do think they have a flair for the overdramatic in their writing, which is sometimes a little over-the-top or on the nose lyrically for my personal tastes. But I still enjoy their music for what it is and would hope that line criticism, divorced of any ill will, would not be the same as what Ronald McDonald has done.
I think Ronald McDonald’s contributions to the form of longform music criticism have been significant in this decade, but I’m not sure the positives outweigh the negatives. He has certainly pioneered a form of Ebert and Roeper direct to cam album reviews, but when I (sparingly) watch videos of albums I’m interested in, his takes on them frequently feel pseudo intellectual in a surface level way. He’s almost predated the use of AI to autogenerate album reviews in the way he focuses on description over trying to get into the underlying sensation of what an album is trying to do as a whole. And he’s consistently chosen troll-y attention tactics over an honest reckoning of what the music means to him, which is a hallmark of my favorite criticism and one thing that the machines can’t take from us. Now, some of this might be the sheer amount of content he produces — he’s basically trying to do Christgau buyer’s guide amounts of criticism but in twelve-minute long YouTube videos (+ Twitch streaming!) instead of 2-4 pithy sentences. Ultimately I think you have to decide what his criticism is being used for to evaluate it. I don’t know enough about his recent output to say that it’s particularly meant to turn people on to new music in a thoughtful way. He’s seeming to suggest it’s about starting discourse, but how often is that discourse based around the music itself?
You nailed it with the "focus on description" part, the only times I regrettably have watched a review of his, my takeaway was simply how much he's just explaining what the songs sound like, who needs that?