YMMV / Spectrum Pulse

• Fandom Rivalry: Fans of The Needle Drop are not particularly kind towards Mark or his fanbase, often trashing his music tastes and fighting with Mark's fans in the comments. This likely stems from the fact that Mark and Anthony Fantano's opinions on albums they review on their respective channels are usually the polar opposite of each other. Interestingly enough, the rivalry does not extend to Anthony and Mark themselves. They are actually good friends, and they even teamed up to review The Killers' 2017 release Wonderful Wonderful.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In his review of Death Race for Love, he describes Juice WRLD as somebody who "might not last too long." This turned out to be more literally true than Mark expected, as Juice WRLD had a fatal seizure later the same year.
  • In the aftermath of his criticisms of BTS's sales tactics on Billboard Breakdown, Mark makes an off-hand mention to the fact that fans attempted to hack his social media accounts (particularly his YouTube account). In late October 2021, Mark's Google account would get hacked, impacting both of his channels with his main account being used to host an NFT livestream. Mark would get both channels back, but due to the aforementioned livestream, combined with the artwork of two albums he reviewed ^note  Later revealed on his appearance on The Podcast That Rocked to be Queen by Nicki Minaj and Charli by Charli XCX , his main channel ended up suspended (fortunately, it was eventually reinstated).
  • In August 2022, Mark reviewed Arcade Fire's sixth studio album WE as an On The Pulse Short. Just three days after Mark posted the review, frontman Win Butler would be accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, which Mark himself acknowledged in the subsequent long-form On The Pulse compilation, noting that the accusations taint the album, making the listening experience less tolerable, and suggests Jack Antonoff, Carly Rae Jepsen and Phoebe Bridgers cover "The Lightning I" and "II".
  • Mark lampshaded this on Twitter in the wake of Britney Spears's memoir The Woman in Me ripping into Justin Timberlake during their time together and short-circuiting his comeback in the process, referencing his video essay from a few months prior on Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience duology and how his career played to the class warfare of cool. Mark would later note when reviewing "Selfish" on Billboard Breakdown that he originally thought his essay was too harsh on Timberlake, only for Spears's revelations to reveal how well the video aged and leave him think he didn't go hard enough on Timberlake's actions.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: Prone to getting this, to the point where in March 2021, Mark gave a Long List on Twitter of artists whose album reviews saw him face this trope. Examples of backlash for negative reviews include Lana Del Rey, Melanie Martinez, Chris Brown and Fifth Harmony.
  • A lot of the negative country music reviews have inspired a fair amount of "colorful" comments from angry country music fans. He's noted that such comments often contain a degree of xenophobia, at times claiming that, as a Canadian, he's not qualified to judge and criticize country music (ignoring Canada's own country music traditions).
  • The backlash to the Illuminate review from the Mendes Army was particularly infamous. You can check out some "highlights" from the review's comment section here.
  • People have not responded well to his reviews of AJR albums (The Click and Neotheater - the former got a 1/10, the latter got a 2/10).
  • He admitted in his review of Fear Inoculum that he is not a fan of tool in the slightest — and that, by saying so, he expected to get inundated with dislikes and negative reviews (He was right). He believes that, while they are genuinely talented, their tunes lack melody and tight craftsmanship compared to other Progressive Metal bands, and that their songwriting is nihilistic, not nearly as smart as it thinks it is, and dependent on drugs to make sense.
  • This is occasionally inverted with him giving higher-than-expected scores to albums which are subject to mockery elsewhere, most infamously with The New Classic by Iggy Azalea and The Big Day by Chance the Rapper.
  • A non-album review example: when Mark analyzed and critiqued BTS' sales tactics on an episode of Billboard Breakdown, not only did the ARMY responded with flooding the video with dislikes and comments bashing him (and attempted to hack his social media), but he was a focal point on an article on Forbes accusing critics of undermining their popularity. Mark would end up addressing the backlash at the start of the following episode. He said it was the third-worst backlash he'd ever faced, behind only the aforementioned Mendes Army's backlash and the time he was physically attacked at a Black Metal concert by a fan of a band he criticized who recognized him.
  • Mark has slowly gotten the ire of Kanye West fans for the simple fact that he's let Kanye's infamous controversial behavior cloud his judgement in their eyes following his more focus on their actions than the music in his reviews of Jesus is King (where he accuses Kanye of simply faking being born-again Christian and being more offended at Kanye's mention of Chick-Fil-A on "Closed on Sunday" than anything else) and especially with DONDA, where he gave it a low score, as well as in the comments of his YouTube short where he explains his reasoning for why he will not review Vultures.
  • Mark drew some backlash when he put "Surface Pressure" at #2 in his Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2022 list, while stating his dislike for Encanto and its music.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the 'Worst Hit Songs of 2016' video, Mark claims that there was "no way in hell" that he was reviewing Post Malone's album Stoney. Fast forward 6 months, and he's forced to review it for his 4th year YouTube anniversary special thanks to Patreon requests.
  • In a Billboard Breakdown episode where Mark was analyzing "Firestone" by Kygo, he noted that Calvin Harris should pay attention to how Kygo made "Firestone" an interesting and fun song. Three years later, Harris would come out with "Slide" with Frank Ocean and Migos that fit exactly the criteria Mark explained in said video. The song itself even threw Mark completely off guard.
  • After The Double Agent makes fun of him for liking "Kiss Kiss" because Mark was a horny teenager in their 'Worst Hits of 2008' crossover review, Mark responds by telling him "you'll get it when you're older". About a year or two later, Ethan came out as asexual, so he never did get it.
  • When talking about "Worth It" by YK Osiris on Billboard Breakdown, he commented on a trap song having a guitar solo, asking why Post Malone hasn't done it. Just a few months later, Post Malone would release his album Hollywood's Bleeding, which includes a collaboration with Ozzy Osbourne himself that indeed ends with a guitar solo.
  • When "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X initially debuted on Billboard Breakdown, he dismissed it as a novelty song that charted because it was big on TikTok, and that it would probably be forgotten. Shortly thereafter, it got a remix with Billy Ray Cyrus, Billboard generated a lot of controversy by removing the song from its country chart, and it broke the record for most weeks at #1 in Hot 100 history. It's safe to say it won't be forgotten anytime soon.
  • Right after the reveal in his review of AJR's The Click that it got a 1/10, he declared it the worst album of the 2010s unless Sam Hunt came along and released something worse. Turns out Sam Hunt's next album wouldn't even be released in the 2010s; it was released in April 2020 and became the first album since The Click to get a 1/10.
  • In the intro to his review of ScHoolboy Q's Oxymoron, Mark discussed how he considers the Grammy Awards, especially the Heavy Metal and Hard Rock awards, to be a complete joke, with one of his reasons why being the fact that Slipknot has more Grammys than Dream Theater. In 2022, Dream Theater would win their first Grammy for Best Metal Performance with "The Alien", placing them on the same amount of wins as Slipknot.
  • When Mark was discussing about "Franchise" on Billboard Breakdown, he suggested a remix featuring another rapper would work better for the song, with Future being one of the artists he brought up. Later on the same day after the video was uploaded, a remix of "Franchise" with Future was released.
  • His destruction of "Daylight" by David Kushner on his Worst Hit Songs of 2023 list ends with him saying "give Hozier another hit you cowards". Come spring 2024, that was exactly what happened, as "Too Sweet" became Hozier’s first #1.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Voltorb claims that he's the real reason why people watch Mark's videos.
  "'Cause let's be honest - I'm the REAL reason you're watching, and if it wasn't for my editing and subtitles our critic would be even more hopeless."
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Stealing (points at the screen) YOUR girl."
  • "Russell DICKerson"
• Questionable Casting: While he liked the chemistry of Joe Nichols and Lucy Hale had on "Red Dress", he said that he wished the label had gone with a younger singer to go with her, personally suggesting Scotty McCreery.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Lampshaded on the March 14, 2020 episode of Billboard Breakdown, where Mark noted viewers would expect him to be extremely angry over "That Way" by Lil Uzi Vert, which samples "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys, only for him to admit that he just doesn't care and thinks it's middle of the road.
  • The April 20, 2024 week of Billboard Breakdown had an all-caps "WORST OF THE WEEK", which you'd likely expect to be "Pi" by J. Cole, Daylyt and Ab-Soul, considering the song was caught in controversy for lines in Cole's verse that were viewed as transphobic, but surprisingly, he doesn't review it in-depth like the other album bomb entries that missed the Top 40 and weren't either his best, worst or honorable mentions of the week (although he does mention the controversial lines), gave the all-caps WORST OF THE WEEK to "Cry" by Benson Boone, and dishonorable mention to another J. Cole album bomb track, "H.Y.B." featuring Bas and Central Cee.

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