The Swiftologist, a Charli XCX critic, talks his The Moment cameo

Charli XCX’s 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.

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 “brat” logo on everything from radio ads to credit cards to an entire summer — and yes, even a presidential campaign.

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) and Zachary Hourihane (a.k.a. the Swiftologist). They both have small parts in The Moment. In the film, Hourihane and Fantano are included in a montage of people talking about brat — and you can hear Hourihane's voice, mainly from his actual review of the album after it came out.

(The starry cast, in addition to Charli, includes Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Isaac Powell, and Alexander Skarsgård. And Kylie Jenner and Rachel Sennott even make appearances as fictionalized versions of themselves.)

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.

While Hourihane can't say much about the behind-the-scenes conversations he had with Charli's team and his management —because he signed an NDA — 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.

"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."

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 — and music reviewers are all too familiar with the resulting backlash in the current social media ecosystem. “Anytime there's a consensus around something, and you break away from the consensus, [the online reaction] is very difficult.”

Lest we forget the Pitchfork editor, Jillian Mapes, who was doxxed 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 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.

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."

"I’m always in someone’s crosshairs, I’ve always pissed someone off, and it’s a different fan base every time,” Hourihane tells Out. “I’ve 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’re not being clear… But I also get a lot of positive feedback, and I really love hearing from artists and people in the music industry. I’m in touch with a lot of artists’ managers who appreciate what I do and pay close attention to what I’m saying.” 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."

At the time of publication, the Singapore-based TikToker has yet to see the movie and is certain there won’t be any screenings in his home country. But he’s open to giving it a watch to review it.

“It would be so fun for the music critic to review how the music critics are portrayed in the movie,” he says. But he also notes that if Fantano and himself serve as the “new face of music criticism,” then he’d 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. “I think there’s something to be said there about how men are allowed to be snarky,” and why that’s more palatable to audiences, he argues. On the other hand, he testifies that the homophobic abuse that he endures is crazy.

“The amount of people who respond to things I’ve said with their full face — and it’s usually gay men — and it usually starts with the most homophobic, rudest mean, personal attack on my appearance, and it’s not something I bring to my reviews,” Hourihane says. “It's interesting to me that it's like, open season on homophobic abuse when I say something that people don't like.”

But that’s not going to stop Hourihane from continuing to post his reviews online because, well, frankly, it’s his job and he “has no choice.” 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’s a constructive conversation. But he’s never really interacted with Charli outside of a press conference when he was 18; other than that, they’ve 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.

In the meantime, The Moment is now in theaters.