Strokes vs. Fantano: the YouTuber responds to Casablancas' "dissing"

The new album by the Strokes, “Reality Awaits“, released last Friday after a long series of delays, is stirring debate not only for its musical choices, including the heavy use of autotune on Julian Casablancas' voice. Fueling the discussion has also been a spat between the New York band's frontman and Anthony Fantano, the popular music critic and creator of The Needle Drop channel.
The spark comes from “Lonely In The Future,” one of the album's tracks, in which Casablancas reflects on the Strokes' legacy twenty-five years into their career. The singer claims credit for the influence the band has had on pop music over the last few decades and suggests that some of the ideas the group pioneered later found their way into the vocabulary of hugely successful artists.
The lyrics namecheck The Weeknd, Harry Styles and John Legend, before Casablancas wryly plays down the whole question of originality with an admission: “All good, we all steal, baby”, acknowledging that every musician inevitably ends up absorbing and reworking ideas from those who came before. Right after, though, the target becomes Anthony Fantano, called out directly in a few particularly blunt lines:

“I heard that twenty fucking years ago, I did
Fantano, word for word, when I was a kid
Stick to the technical ‘cause that’s great
But you would not recognize art in any age”

The attack essentially rehashes what Casablancas had already claimed a few months earlier during his appearance on the podcast hosted by IDLES's Joe Talbot. On that occasion, the frontman had acknowledged Fantano's competence in the technical analysis of records, while disputing his ability to recognize a work's real artistic value.

Fantano has now decided to respond with a video posted on his own channels. The critic first clarified that he hasn't yet listened to the whole of “Reality Awaits”, aside from the singles already released, and that his response isn't meant to be either a review of the album or a verdict on “Lonely In The Future”. What really prompted him to speak up was Casablancas' choice to name him explicitly in a song. “Getting name-checked on an album that's pressed on vinyl, on CD, and put out on streaming platforms is a whole different thing,” Fantano notes, stressing the difference from a simple jab tossed off in an interview. The YouTuber also rejects the idea that he holds any bias against the Strokes. On the contrary, he points out that he has always considered them among the best bands to emerge in the 2000s, and that he has repeatedly given positive reviews both to the band and to the Voidz, Casablancas' side project.
According to Fantano, what's really behind the singer's hostility may instead be his negative review of the latest Voidz album, which he criticized both for the quality of the recordings and for the decision to use an AI-generated image as cover art. Fantano also addresses Casablancas' broader accusation, that he's incapable of recognizing art when it's right in front of him. To back up his position, he cites several musicians he praised and championed back when they were still far from the popularity they'd later achieve, including IDLES themselves and Geese. “People are free to disagree with my reviews,” he says, “but saying I can't recognize art is simply false.”

Despite the clash, Fantano still seems intent on not turning this into a personal war. The critic insists he'll keep listening to the Strokes regardless of whatever verdict he ends up giving “Reality Awaits”. He closes the video with a joke, announcing that he plans to buy a physical copy of the new album too: “My name is printed on that record. How could I not buy it?”

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