Charli XCX\u2019s The Moment sees the artist at her most reflective. Directed by Aidan Zamiri, the meta-mockumentary, inspired by the artist’s first headlining tour and featuring a fictionalized version of Charli, tackles the journey from niche legend to pop star.<\/p>\n
And the 2024 album brat indeed marked a turning point for Charli XCX and culture. Today, it now feels like everyone is trying to capitalize on this fame, throwing the slime-green \u201cbrat\u201d logo on everything from radio ads to credit cards to an entire summer \u2014 and yes, even a presidential campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n This newfound attention thrust Charli into mainstream vision and criticism from a new kind of online ilk: YouTube\/TikTok music critics. Among these critics were Anthony Fantano (a.k.a. the Needle Drop<\/a>) and Zachary Hourihane (a.k.a. the Swiftologist<\/a>). They both have small parts in The Moment. In the film, Hourihane and Fantano are included in a montage of people talking about brat \u2014 and you can hear Hourihane’s voice, mainly from his actual review of the album after it came out.<\/p>\n (The starry cast, in addition to Charli, includes Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Isaac Powell, and Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd. And Kylie Jenner and Rachel Sennott even make appearances as fictionalized versions of themselves.)<\/p>\n Ahead, Out spoke with Hourihane about getting cast in the film, and what he felt like the British artist was saying about online music criticism by including his voice, along with Fantano’s, in The Moment.<\/p>\n While Hourihane can’t say much about the behind-the-scenes conversations he had with Charli’s team and his management \u2014because he signed an NDA \u2014 he does say there wasn’t much to report. But to be fair, his involvement was pretty limited, and his critical counterpart had a bit more of an acting role in the movie. The videos that were used in The Moment were his genuine reactions to the album, which he said he loved.<\/p>\n “I really liked brat,” the content creator said during this Out interview. “She never really clicked for me [previously]. I felt like Crash was kind of just mid-pop music, and I thought she didn’t really land the point that she was trying to make. But then with brat, it felt like all the pieces kind of clicked together, and it made sense.”<\/p>\n It’s fair to say that Hourihane is a somewhat divisive figure in criticism online, but that’s mainly because he’s not shy from going against the mainstream attitude towards a specific album or song \u2014 and music reviewers are all too familiar with the resulting backlash in the current social media ecosystem. \u201cAnytime there’s a consensus around something, and you break away from the consensus, [the online reaction] is very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Lest we forget the Pitchfork editor, Jillian Mapes, who was doxxed<\/a> after writing a review of Taylor Swift’s Folklore that wasn’t positive enough for Swifties. Or when Nicki Minaj fans harassed and doxxed content creators<\/a> who dared to speak negatively about “Big Foot,” her diss track response to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hiss,” where the Houston rapper seemed to take a subtle jab at Minaj’s husband’s sex-offender status.<\/p>\n Hourihane has seen his fair share of dissent from the court of public opinion after sharing his views on popular projects put out by the main pop girls. One that saw blowback recently is Chappell Roan’s Grammy-nominated single, “The Subway.” After he uploaded that video, he became the subject of discourse in his comments section, where people attempted to argue that his hate for Roan was “misogynistic.”<\/p>\n “I\u2019m always in someone\u2019s crosshairs, I\u2019ve always pissed someone off, and it\u2019s a different fan base every time,\u201d Hourihane tells Out. \u201cI\u2019ve learned to be less cavalier with my reviews just because it’s easier for people to take you out of context or misunderstand you when you\u2019re not being clear\u2026 But I also get a lot of positive feedback, and I really love hearing from artists and people in the music industry. I\u2019m in touch with a lot of artists\u2019 managers who appreciate what I do and pay close attention to what I\u2019m saying.\u201d He adds, “I try to focus on the more real-life positive indicators of impact rather than like [whether or not] Zara Larsson fans hate me.”<\/p>\n At the time of publication, the Singapore-based TikToker has yet to see the movie and is certain there won\u2019t be any screenings in his home country. But he\u2019s open to giving it a watch to review it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be so fun for the music critic to review how the music critics are portrayed in the movie,\u201d he says. But he also notes that if Fantano and himself serve as the \u201cnew face of music criticism,\u201d then he\u2019d like to call out the idea of it being two white men. In fact, Hourihane says his favorite critics are women; he shouts out Amanda Petrusich, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and the The New York Times pop critic Lindsay Zoladz, as two of his favorites. \u201cI think there\u2019s something to be said there about how men are allowed to be snarky,\u201d and why that\u2019s more palatable to audiences, he argues. On the other hand, he testifies that the homophobic abuse that he endures is crazy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe amount of people who respond to things I\u2019ve said with their full face \u2014 and it\u2019s usually gay men \u2014 and it usually starts with the most homophobic, rudest mean, personal attack on my appearance, and it\u2019s not something I bring to my reviews,\u201d Hourihane says. \u201cIt’s interesting to me that it’s like, open season on homophobic abuse when I say something that people don’t like.\u201d<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not going to stop Hourihane from continuing to post his reviews online because, well, frankly, it\u2019s his job and he \u201chas no choice.\u201d The main objective of posting his content is not for the attention of the artist, which does come at points and is nice when it\u2019s a constructive conversation. But he\u2019s never really interacted with Charli outside of a press conference when he was 18; other than that, they\u2019ve barely crossed digital paths. He will continue letting criticism lobbed at him roll off his back and go about providing the most balanced criticism he can.<\/p>\n In the meantime, The Moment is now in theaters.<\/p>\n This article originally appeared on Out: The Swiftologist, a Charli XCX critic, talks his ‘The Moment’ cameo<\/a><\/p>\n RELATED