Music
Jack Antonoff is a jack-of-all-trades... and a master of a lot of them
The singer, musician and producer sat down to chat about how he creates those big memorable pop moments for so many of music's best.
Jack Antonoff gives the term “jack-of-all-trades” a whole new meaning – but it’s certainly incorrect to say he’s a “master of none”. In Bleachers, Antonoff writes, records and produces bright, nostalgic, ‘80s-drenched songs that sound like they’d sit beautifully in a John Hughes soundtrack, or like you’re peeking into a Polaroid picture that’s suddenly come to life. As a producer, he’s worked with myriad pop stars like Taylor Swift, Lorde, St Vincent and Sara Bareilles, co-writing and guiding behemoth hits like Look What You Made Me Do, Green Light and Brave. In fun., he helped bring to fruition triumphant songs like We Are Young and Some Nights. Suffice it to say, Antonoff is definitely a master of writing big, memorable pop songs.
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“You hear something in your head and you have an idea for what it is, and sometimes it’s better to just spend a million hours trying to do it yourself rather than try to describe it [to someone else],” Antonoff begins. “I took lessons for a while on a few different things but I never liked the specifics of learning, like I had a hard time learning and just wanted to truck around and figure it out myself, for better or worse.
“I’m that way with a lot of things – like if I buy some gadget or something, I hate reading instructions. I’ll just use it incorrectly for like a really long time, and I think it’s a really bad quality for some areas but for writing and making records it works for me because, you know, I don’t really wanna do it any other way. I like whatever random way I figure out. A lot of things that I’m proud of happened from fucking up,” he admits.
I hate reading instructions. I’ll just use it incorrectly for like a really long time, and I think it’s a really bad quality for some areas but for writing and making records it works for me.
He has a really fast and matter-of-fact manner of speaking, almost like his thoughts are coming out full speed from his brain and he has to catch them at his lips before they spill out. One would assume his song-writing might take a similar form.
So is there a recipe for writing one of these big, emotional, anthemic pop songs; are there rhythmic components or studio techniques in common? But Antonoff isn’t about to share his trade secrets.
“I don’t necessarily have a recipe for success, I just know that… the stuff that has meant the most to me has been music that is lived in this schizophrenic place where you could party to it, cry to it, and I want both of that. That’s always been my favourite stuff. And not necessarily being heavy-handed on either side but just because it might be very emotional, doesn’t mean you have to be hunched over your guitar. Or it could be a big, bright song and just because it’s a big, bright song doesn’t mean it has to be about something stupid, it could be about something emotional. So challenging anything to not look exactly like what you think it has to look like.
“I don’t know if you ever master it, but I think that writing and making records is like this constant process of searching for those feelings and sometimes you get them, and sometimes you don’t. If you get them, you share them with people. If you don’t get them, you hit delete,” he says simply.
It seems many of these juxtaposing, complex emotions stem from the vibrancy and magic of New York City, where Antonoff lives and works in his home studio. From Taylor Swift’s poignant Reputation album-closer, New Year’s Day, which never mentions NYC but brings to mind a trashed Manhattan penthouse after a NYE party, to Bleachers’ Don’t Take The Money, which sounds like driving down the Brooklyn Bridge with your head out of the taxi window, to Lorde’s thundering Green Light, the Big Apple is oft a source of inspiration. But the reality is – Antonoff is and will always be a New Jersey boy at heart, idolising quintessential New Jerseyan Bruce Springsteen.
“I grew up in a small town called New Milford and New Jersey is just a series of different small towns. You grow up THAT close to one of the great cities in the world and it gives you something to dream about and hope for. It really is this wild dream that’s standing right there and you idolise it. You spend your whole life trying to get out of New Jersey and the funny thing is, that’s actually a really beautiful thing. It changes your perspective of where you’re reporting from,” Antonoff says.
“That’s a lot of my writings – I feel like I’m reporting from outside of the centre of the world, not the centre of the world. What it was like growing up [in Jersey], I can’t shake that. Even if I wanted to, it’s just there. That lives with me and it’s in my songs and at this point it doesn’t matter where I am. I live in New York and I like it here, but I’m not from here. I didn’t grow up here and I lived my whole life in New Jersey. I carry this feeling always, like I’m sitting on the outside of things.”
I carry this feeling always, like I’m sitting on the outside of things.
Antonoff admits his proximity to New York City growing up didn’t always mean he spent every waking morning traipsing its streets.
“It’s funny because I grew up so close but also so far away. We’d come in and do things and hang out and go see concerts, but you really spend most of your time not in the city, it’s like a whole other world when you grow up that close. You know, like, I grew up a 30-minute car ride away from New York City, but it’s not something we’d do… like we’d go in maybe like ten times a year, not a ton. Your life is really, like, RIGHT where you are. Even like where I live in New York, there’s all these things in New York City and I just stay like a block from my apartment. You really get defined by your limited area.”
You’d imagine that working late in a New York City home studio with personalities like Taylor Swift or Lorde might bring about some midnight adventures in one of the best cities in the world – escaping their cabin fever to grab food at an all-night diner, going for a walk and stumbling upon a tattoo parlour – but Antonoff says working in a home studio just feels… like being at home with your mates. But that’s the power of Antonoff’s writing and production style; it romanticises NYC for you.
“You never know what’s the thing that’s gonna happen quickly or what’s gonna take forever and certain songs you work on for months and months and months and certain songs happen in 20 minutes,” Antonoff says, referring to Swift’s New Year’s Day. “And it doesn’t matter. Neither one is better or worse – that’s just the funny thing about writing and making records. It comes out and that’s it. There’s something about being in New York. It’s such an intense, emotional place. There’s so much happening. So much good, so much bad. It’s just… I dunno. It makes you feel safe to just write and tell stories.”
On Bleachers’ newest record, Gone Now, Antonoff tells stories of reckless marriage proposals (Let’s Get Married), hating how you can’t hide or lie about who you are to someone you love (Hate That You Know Me, a Carly Rae Jepsen collab) and crippling nostalgia (I Miss Those Days). Though Antonoff writes for himself, he says it’s hard to know how people will receive each song.
“At the moment there’s a song called All My Heroes that means a lot to me. It’s funny how when you start touring and sharing music and seeing how people react to it, you see these crazy waves of different emotions about songs that you thought you knew, and all of a sudden you’re knowing them in a different way.
“Sometimes it’s also just surprising – songs that you think are gonna depress the shit out of, people wanna party to. Or songs that you think are so upbeat, people find really sad. All you can do is share it as best as you can but you can’t know how people are gonna take it, and that’s a really exciting thing.”
Antonoff has much to look forward to – his work with Lorde on Melodrama has been nominated for an Album Of The Year Grammy this year, alongside Childish Gambino, JAY-Z and Kendrick Lamar and Bruno Mars. Next month he’ll be in town supporting Paramore on their Australian tour.
“It’s a very exciting year,” Antonoff says.
Bleachers' album Gone Now is out now, and they'll be supporting Paramore on tour in Australia from February 8 to February 11.
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