Over the past 18 months, Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour has taken the pop music world by storm, and in a show full of great moments, one stood out: “Cruel Summer,” a song produced by Swift and her friend Jack Antonoff:
It’s difficult to overstate Antonoff’s influence on pop music. He’s written or produced some of the biggest songs with some of the biggest names in the business, including Lana Del Ray, Sabrina Carpenter and The Chicks. But his producing career began when Swift decided he was someone she wanted to work with.
In his final Grammy speech, Antonoff credited Swift as the one who “opened the damn door” for him. “Literally!” he said.
Literally? “Well, metaphorically!” he laughed. “It was so validating. Finally, someone hears what I hear and isn’t afraid to just say, ‘It’s done. You know, hit the records.'”
Since then, he has pressed numerous records. In addition to his producing gigs, Antonoff is the lead singer and driving force behind his band Bleachers. And he has 11 Grammys, including producer of the year in 2022. He won it again in 2023, And 2024.
These days, when he’s not touring, Antonoff often works from his studio in Los Angeles. He says a lot of his work involves “playing,” like the time he was on the synthesizer and came up with the signature Bleachers sound — a riff that became “Rollercoaster,” one of the greatest songs of the group to date.
He’s become a reliable source for hit music, but Antonoff said he never knows when the creative lightning bolt will strike: “You look at the history of any album, any song. Nobody never said: ‘We planned that day to write the best song we ever wrote. We had coffee when we went in. And we did it. so-and-so’s plane was delayed and I got kicked out of my hotel in Reno because of some stupid shit this person did while walking down the street and I hear this…’ You know, it’s always. that coincidence. That’s where it all comes from, I never want to lose that.
And there’s nothing normal about Jack Antonoff’s life. Born and raised in New Jersey, Antonoff formed his first band in high school. But success came slowly. In 2017, “Sunday Morning” visited Antonoff at the family home, where he had lived until he was 29. [He’d already had a #1 hit record.]
He was back East last week for a personal event: his band was playing at Madison Square Garden in New York and the butterflies were waking up. “Most of the time, actually, even if a concert is sold out, I have such a level of surprise. It never gets old.
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And let’s talk milestones: Her first Broadway show just opened. Antonoff composed the music for the play “Romeo + Juliet”. “When I think of ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and I was doing that to music, I think of hope and love and finding something and running with it against all odds,” he said. “I always forget everything death. And so, I started going back and integrating that slightly into the score, a little bit, without knowing it, but hinting that it was going to be horrible. “Because I forget!”
His own love life is less troubled. Last year he married actress Margaret Qualley. You may know her as the daughter of actor Andie McDowell. You may not know that she directed and danced in the music video for the Bleachers song “Tiny Moves.” “It was real magic,” Antonoff said.
At 40, married to the woman of his dreams, and perhaps in the running for a fourth record producer of the year at the Grammy Awards, Jack Antonoff is on fire.
It seems surreal, he says: “And it continues to be because one of the only promises of my work is how ephemeral it is – not the performance, not the audience, but that kind of success. moment when I am not surprised by all this. »
You can stream Bleachers’ latest album, titled “Bleachers,” by clicking the embed below (free Spotify signup required to hear the tracks in full):
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Publisher: Remington Korper.
Tracy Smith
