MBW’s World’s Greatest Songwriters series celebrates the composers behind the globe’s biggest hits. The last installment of 2023 features one of the most successful writers and producers of the modern age, Jack Antonoff – a key collaborator with, amongst others, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, St Vincent and, of course, Taylor Swift. World’s Greatest Songwriters is supported by AMRA – the global digital music collection society which strives to maximize value for songwriters and publishers in the digital age.
The first time Jack Antonoff realized he was a pretty good songwriter was when he was in indie rock jam band Steel Train.
Their 2003 debut EP, For You My Dear, featured a surprisingly delicate ballad called Angelica.
“Before that, I was writing songs for a hardcore band, so it was more about the live performance,” Antonoff says. “But that was the first time that I thought to myself, ‘Oh wow, I can hear this outside of being the person who wrote it, and I feel very proud of it’.
“I’ve been looking for that feeling ever since,” he adds. “When you get it, you recognize it and, when you don’t get it, you wait!”
These days, you suspect Jack Antonoff doesn’t have to wait too long for inspiration to strike. Via his collaborations with Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Florence + The Machine, St Vincent and many others, as well as his own work in Bleachers and Fun, he has become perhaps the foremost – and certainly the most recognizable – songwriter-producer of the age; involved in multiple Grammys, billions of streams and perhaps the last protector of the album as music’s premier format.
In the past year alone, he has worked on Taylor Swift’s Midnights, Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd and The 1975’s Being Funny In A Foreign Language, making him the frontrunner to again win the Producer of the Year Grammy; a gong he also picked up in both 2022 and 2023.
Swift’s Anti-Hero and Del Rey’s A&W, both co-written and co-produced by Antonoff, are also up for Song of the Year (Anti-Hero is also shortlisted for Record of the Year), while Swift and Del Rey are both nominated for Album of the Year.
But it wasn’t always this way. Antonoff grew up in New Jersey and, as a teenager, became a minor face on the state’s legendary 2000s emo scene, which spawned the likes of My Chemical Romance and Saves The Day.
Antonoff’s punk band Outline did not hit quite the same heights and, while his next project, Steel Train, scored a deal with Drive-Thru Records and toured prodigiously, Eras Tour-style superstardom remained a long way off.
“the universe was screaming in my face that it wasn’t working out!”
“During that time, of course I wanted more,” Antonoff shrugs, as he talks to MBW from Los Angeles, where his East Coast cool is being “flustered” by the dry heat. “But I’m proud of it, because there’s not one moment I look back on where I ever thought, ‘Shall I do something else?’ Not one! And Jesus Christ, the universe was screaming in my face that it wasn’t working out!
“I’m not talking one year or two years, but years and years of losing money,” laughs the songwriter, who scored his first No.1 in 2012 with We Are Young, as a member of the pop-rock band Fun. “But that’s all we have in life: believe in something, whether anyone else believes in it or not. And, if people eventually believe in it with you, it’s very life-affirming…”
These days, of course, musicians and the music industry entrust Antonoff with their most sacred projects. Some songwriters get calls from desperate A&Rs searching for a last-minute hit; Antonoff is the guy you enlist to build a long-term project over multiple releases.
He’s worked on every Taylor Swift album since 1989, the joy they take in working together perfectly captured by the viral video showing them gleefully nailing the bridge to 2017’s Getaway Car.
Today, he’s similarly thrilled at the belated success of Swift’s Cruel Summer; co-written by Swift, Antonoff and St Vincent, co-produced by Swift and Antonoff and one of 2023’s biggest hits despite first being released on Swift’s classic 2019 Lover album (“You’re always writing into the future, so it doesn’t surprise me when things have different lives”).
But while he seems to have cracked pop’s DNA code, he insists that kind of studio alchemy remains “endlessly mysterious”, peppering his conversation with possibly tongue-in-cheek references to those often-uncredited studio collaborators, magic and God.
He’s brokered an extensive new partnership with Jamie Oborne and Dirty Hit, with Oborne now his manager and Bleachers signing to DH. And he’s gearing up for the self-titled fourth Bleachers album, due out in 2024, and its lead single, the big Dexys energy of Modern Girl (“Dexys is my biggest influence that doesn’t necessarily have to do with the writing,” he grins. “They’re the ultimate in controlled chaos”).
Some producers might shy away from the spotlight that comes with being an artist, but Antonoff is unfazed by the attention. He professes to be unaware – or at least unperturbed – by the avalanche of think pieces, speculation and gossip about him and his work online, just as he insists he has no long-term plans for pop domination or, indeed, anything else.
“I went to the studio yesterday, I’ll go to the studio today and that’s what I’ve got!” he chuckles. “I’m really only focused on the day ahead.”
Luckily for us, today involves him sitting down with MBW to talk Taylor Swift, artificial intelligence and the fine art of co-writing…
WHAT WAS THE THINKING BEHIND YOUR NEW PUBLISHING, RECORD AND MANAGEMENT DEALS?
Jamie [Oborne, pictured with Antonoff, below] is the best. He’s changed my life in just about every positive way. And Jen [Knoepfle] is the person who understood me as a songwriter before that was a popular concept!
If I play Jen music, she hears my music; she doesn’t hear my success. She heard it before anyone cared and she hears it now, and those are the people I want around me. On the contrary, Jamie’s a new figure and he just gets it.
Credit: Jared Christiansen
There’s a deep feeling behind the records and he’s just right there with me. I feel more proud and inspired than I ever have – and it’s because he loves what he does and he’s brilliant at what he does.
Our brains are so connected; he’ll send me something I haven’t heard yet and I’ll just fucking love it. I’ll play him something and he’ll totally understand what I’m trying to accomplish. Jen, Jamie, my audience, my band… I feel very lucky to be surrounded by people who I’d be happy doing this with if nobody cared.
ARE YOU CONSCIOUS OF HOW PROLIFIC YOUR LAST DECADE HAS BEEN AS A SONGWRITER AND PRODUCER?
I’ve had periods of my life where I go in and out of feeling inspired, and this decade just gets better and better. I feel closer and closer to what I’m trying to express. Putting out music is a bit like shouting something on the street: you wouldn’t walk out and shout, ‘I’m going to have lunch!’
But you have these ideas and this deranged part of yourself says, ‘I want to shout this to the world’. It’s crazy, because these things are so complex, take so long and there are so many baby steps to get to them.
But it’s actually not that deep. You have a feeling, a thought and a sound and you have to create it. And then, if you can create it the way you dreamed about it, you have to release it.
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM ALL THOSE YEARS IN ALTERNATIVE ROCK BANDS?
It utterly shaped me. You have to have a firm line in the sand of what you think is OK, and what you don’t. Otherwise, you won’t recognize yourself in a few days.
WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR PARTNERSHIP WITH TAYLOR SWIFT HAS BEEN SO SUCCESSFUL?
It’s very hard to talk about, because it’s a lot of magic. I’ve been able to articulate and intellectualize it to a point where I can talk about literal things that happen, but the real answer to that question has always been hard to access.
Because, like any of the great magical relationships in one’s life, I don’t sit around and think about that magic, I interact with it. I always think to myself that, if I could explain it, then it wouldn’t be it.
WAS THAT MAGIC THERE WHEN YOU FIRST WORKED WITH TAYLOR?
Yes. Straight away. That’s something I’ve noticed in any of the great relationships in my life: whether it’s with people who I’ve made records with, whether it’s with my band, whether it’s with my best friends or a relationship I have with a piece of music or a painting, I can’t develop that magic, it’s there right away.
It always has been. I don’t have a story where I was bored by someone and then something happened; that spark is alive from day one.
HOW DO YOU RECOGNIZE IT WHEN IT HAPPENS?
You can’t fake the feeling and you can’t get good at it, it’s just magic. But what you can get good at is capturing it when it happens. Just making sure, when I’m in the studio, that things are quite literally plugged in a certain way, so if I get the thing, I’ve got it in a way that I’m going to be ready to give it to the world.
If you have a great lyric, you don’t want to be fumbling around with Pro Tools or having an issue with the mic. You have to almost be like a fisherman; have your tools set up so, if it bites, you’re right there.
IS THERE AN ARTIST YOU HAVEN’T WORKED WITH YET THAT’S ON YOUR BUCKET LIST?
No, I’m really happy. I’m really into these long relationships [with artists]. It doesn’t mean I won’t work with new people, it just means I don’t think about this. I just think about where I’m going with my people.
CAN THOSE CREATIVE RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE LIKES OF TAYLOR, LANA AND LORDE LAST FOREVER?
If the magic’s there, these things last as long as they should. It’s not to me, it’s up to… God? [Laughs] I don’t think about it in any way, it’s just what comes out of the room. You have it or you don’t and every time we have it, I’m thankful.
YOU SEEM VERY FOCUSED ON MAKING ALBUMS. IS THAT DIFFICULT AT A TIME WHEN THE INDUSTRY SEEMS TO BE MOVING AWAY FROM THE FORMAT?
I always hear that, but it’s not really the people I know. There are very different music businesses: in the music business I’m in, I don’t really know many people who don’t believe that the album is God. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that might think differently and do it differently.
I am most functional when I think about things from a bird’s eye view. I always see things as a whole and see albums and how albums should be bigger than the sum of their parts.
It’s important to make sure you’re staying in the lane where you know what to do and how to do it. I know how to make albums, and that’s what I do. I don’t think people ask me to pop in and do this or that, because I wouldn’t be very helpful!
SO WHAT DO YOU SAY TO PEOPLE WHO SAY TIKTOK-FRIENDLY 15-SECOND SNIPPETS ARE WHAT WORKS IN MUSIC AT THE MOMENT?
You’d have to back up and say, well, work for what? Does it work for having something be popular for two weeks? Sure. Does it work for an artist’s career? Never once has.
“Never put something out you’re not in love with, because it’s impossible to win. Even if it’s the biggest hit in the world, you’ll be sad.”
If anything, a lot of the best artists in the world often struggle when they have those moments. Never record something you’re not in love with, never put something out you’re not in love with, because it’s impossible to win. Even if it’s the biggest hit in the world, you’ll be sad. It’s a very complicated process but a very simple concept: just do you, that’s all you have to do.
THAT MIGHT NOT BE EASY FOR EVERYONE…
The worst thing that gets dangled above people is the ability to continue to be an artist. That happens a lot in the music industry, people will say, ‘Oh, just do this, then you can do whatever you want, because you’ll be all good’. You just make a choice early on if you’re going to make a deal with the devil or not…
DOES THE MUSIC INDUSTRY NEED TO CHANGE THE WAY IT TREATS SONGWRITERS?
Without a doubt. Every industry needs to address how they treat their artists.
“It’s very common to be a broke artist, but there are not a lot of broke music business people.”
It’s very common to be a broke artist, but there are not a lot of broke music business people, because that’s a job that you get a paycheck for. In our culture, we have this idea that if you’re an artist, you’re lucky to be there, so to be paid a fair wage is a luxury, not an obvious bit of fairness.
Historically, what artists and writers do is, they go and make art. So, they’re very easy people to screw over, because they’re thinking about a bigger thing. I don’t sit around and think about money, I sit around and think about songs and albums.
ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT THE IMPACT AI COULD HAVE ON SONGWRITING AND PRODUCTION?
I don’t give a shit about what it’ll do to the art, because I don’t think it’ll do anything. To be in the presence of something made by a human is a huge part of the source. But I think it’ll fuck up the commerce for a lot of struggling artists.
This is the problem with the business side of things; they can often figure out a way to ‘disrupt’ or break something, but what they can’t seem to ever figure out is, it was never broken. So, then we just go on these cyclical journeys and it’s exhausting and sad that the people who get fucked the most on the journey are the artists themselves.
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT TODAY’S MUSIC INDUSTRY, RIGHT HERE AND NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHY?
I would completely dismantle what’s happened to live music and bring back local promoters. I would make it possible for an artist to sell a ticket with a very tiny fee and have that be that, and no fucking bullshit, free market absurdity.
What’s happened to the touring industry is heartbreaking. And no one wins except a few assholes. The artists don’t win, the fans don’t win. Shows are beautiful places and they’ve got to be protected from this gross capitalist insanity.
IS THE REST OF THE NEW BLEACHERS ALBUM AS UPBEAT AS MODERN GIRL?
Modern Girl is probably in the top three most joyous, fun songs on the album. There’s a lot of sadness on there too, but that’s not how I wanted to introduce people to the album. Right now, sadness has become such a go-to expression that it felt more thrilling to express some joy and humor.
THE WORLD COULD PROBABLY DO WITH SOME OF THAT RIGHT NOW…
When you get to live in a time where it’s expected that everyone is everything all the time, at some point you do take a step back and think, ‘I don’t want to be everything, what do I do? What do I love to do? And what do I do that matters?’ And I’m not talking about firing off the right tweet, I’m talking about something that really matters.
So, if you are lucky enough to know the answer to that question, it feels absurd to not go at 100mph down that road. More than ever right now, I know why I’m here, I know how to do it and I don’t want to be distracted from it.
THAT SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD PHILOSOPHY FOR LIFE…
It’s good for a band! I’ll let you know how my life turns out, but it’s surely good for a mission statement of what it means to be a songwriter and band leader…
