Anthony Fantano

Fantano was born in Connecticut, and is of Sicilian descent. He spent his teenage years in Wolcott, Connecticut.[5]

Fantano in February 2010.

Fantano as his alter-ego Cal Chuchesta[1]

Fantano started his career in the mid-2000s as a music director for the Southern Connecticut State University college radio station.[6]

In 2007, Fantano started working at Connecticut Public Radio, where he hosted The Needle Drop.[7] That same year, he launched The Needle Drop in the form of written reviews, eventually launching his series of video reviews in early 2009, starting with a Jay Reatard record.[5][8] Fantano's review for Flying Lotus' 2010 album Cosmogramma appearing next to other Flying Lotus videos in YouTube's "Featured Videos" section gave him the "hint" to continue making video reviews.[7] In 2010, Fantano removed older reviews that contained music clips in order to avoid violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.[5] At the time, he was working on The Needle Drop at the college radio station, as well as at a pizza restaurant. In late 2011, he decided to pursue The Needle Drop full-time, but kept affiliation with WNPR until 2014.[6][5][7]

He was interviewed at South by Southwest in 2011 about the rise of music vlogging, along with Matt Galloway of the Rock It Out! blog and Michael Roffman, president and editor-in-chief of Consequence of Sound.[9] In March 2011, he was featured in an article from The Guardian also about the rise of music vlogging.[10] The Needle Drop won the 2011 O Music Awards in the "Beyond the Blog" category.[11][12] Fantano was offered an album review show on Adult Swim but did not go through with it.[5]

According to New York Times culture correspondent Joe Coscarelli, Fantano has successfully brought an "old art to a new medium" and has revitalized the record review format for a younger generation of music consumers.[13][14] Fantano had a cameo in Lil Nas X's video for the Young Thug and Mason Ramsey remix of "Old Town Road", appearing as a worker for the Area 51 military installation (a reference to the "Storm Area 51" meme).[15]

In order to earn enough money to pay his editor Austin Walsh, by November 2016, Fantano had recorded more regularly on a secondary YouTube channel, "thatistheplan", on which he reviewed memes and recorded "often irreverent videos that don't fall into the record review format", according to Spin.[5] This secondary channel came into question and controversy in October 2017, when an article published in The Fader accused Fantano of promoting alt-right sentiments in videos on "thatistheplan". Fantano was criticized for the use of Pepe the Frog memes (which had recently been labeled an alt-right symbol) and targeting feminists.[16] After the article was released, multiple scheduled dates of "The Needle Drop" U.S. tour were cancelled, with at least one ticket booking site for a Brooklyn tour date stating that their cancellation was due to the Fader article.[17][18]

Fantano produced a video response calling the critical article a "hit job". He disputed accusations of sympathizing with the alt-right and stated that the videos in question were "satirical". The article was later deleted by The Fader, with both parties saying that the claims were settled.[19] In a later interview, Fantano acknowledged that there had been some "grubby, closed-minded, young, aggressive male" viewers on the "thatistheplan" channel and disavowed what he saw as the "toxic and problematic" side of internet humor, stating that the incident had led him to be more vocal in his advocacy for social justice issues.[13] Although most of his videos feature some degree of internet-friendly humor, his tone and presentation have varied depending on subject matter; for example, he refrained from making jokes and took a serious approach while reviewing A Crow Looked at Me by Mount Eerie because the album's lyrical contents center on the recent death of the artist's wife.[20]

When asked about the merits of Fantano's reviews, Robert Christgau said in 2019, "he seems to have arrived at a plausible brand of 21st-century rockcrit...Fantano seems to have figured out a way to make some kind of living by disseminating his own criticism in the online age. That's an achievement."[21] In September 2020, writing in the The New York Times, Joe Coscarelli noted that Fantano is "probably the most popular music critic left standing".[13]

Fantano met his wife, Dominique Boxley, online in 2008.[5][22] They reside in Middletown, Connecticut. He is an atheist[23] and a vegan, having swapped to the diet after first going vegetarian in his late teens.[6] Fantano also plays the bass guitar, and is frequently seen playing it during introductions to his "Let's Argue" and "Let's Agree" episodes on his second channel. Fantano endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 United States presidential election.[24]

Albums

• Taiga (2009) (as bass player)[25][26]
• Anthony FanFiction Vol.1 (2015)

• Official website
• Anthony Fantano's channel on YouTube
• Anthony Fantano at Discogs
• Anthony Fantano at IMDb
• Cal Chuchesta at Discogs