The Many Lives of Jack Antonoff

Jack Antonoff’s penthouse-like studio space is a relic of pop music history. In a sunlit haven that leads to a sprawling roof deck, parts of Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n' Sweet and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department—and some of Midnights—took shape. In the live alcove, Antonoff made Lorde’s Melodrama and St. Vincent’s Masseduction. Behind a closed door across the floor, the second Bleachers album was mixed and Lana Del Rey’s 2019 track “Venice Bitch” was crafted.

Space is paramount to Antonoff. “I believe a lot in spaces,” he says, unwrapping a piece of Trident gum on the couch of his roof deck. “I move around and get inspired by space.” Most days, the musician and superproducer can be found on the top floor of Electric Lady Studios in the heart of the West Village in a bohemian sanctuary with brick walls, decked out in Persian rugs and paisley-upholstered furniture. Previously, he had worked in the basement, but the lack of light didn’t suit him. “Right now, this is a place where I feel really free and excited and can hear myself bouncing off the wall,” he says, gesturing at its breadth. More than 20 years into a career that has seen 11 Grammy wins and a slew of platinum albums, what he says he's most looking for when he comes here now is to "shock" himself.

As one of the most prolific producers in music, Antonoff has become a go-to collaborator for pop’s biggest artists including Swift, Del Rey, Carpenter, Lorde and Florence + the Machine. When he’s not helping shape chart-topping albums, he’s often working on his band Bleachers or championing the New Jersey arts scene with his annual Shadow of the City Festival. Recently, he’s added producing for TV and film and composing for Broadway to his resume.

Despite all this, the 40-year-old multihyphenate is unassuming, in his signature chunky, round-framed glasses, and a worn vintage tee and olive trousers, when we meet up in his downtown studio space. Taking a break from working—which, as he often tweets, he’s always doing—Antonoff discusses pivoting to Broadway for Romeo + Juliet, switching gears between his own projects and other artists’, and working with Swift and Carpenter.

TIME: Romeo + Juliet is your first time composing for Broadway. What has that experience been like coming from pop producing?

Antonoff: I had almost done it so many times. [Theater director] Sam Gold, who I met years ago, texted me and was like, "Would you want to do music for this Romeo + Juliet idea I have?" I'm really enjoying it. It's all happening live, so there's a lot of arguing with synthesizer sounds. It's Shakespeare, but it's also so universal. My favorite part about it is it always makes you forget that two kids are going to die because it's so wrapped up in tension. It’s young, sad, and horny, all at once. Then you're like, "Oh my God, two kids killed themselves,” and that's sort of the great trick of it. 

You said there's a lot of synths. How would you define the genres you're playing with?

It's not synthy. I didn't want it to be too wooden, but I didn't want it to sound like I was trying to put the thing on its head. I was thinking about Lindsey Buckingham, really percussive guitar, and then I found this palette that's very warm. There's actual songs in it, but it's not a musical. 

You described your most recent studio album Bleachers as being about a lot of pretty mature subjects, like grief, marriage, trauma. How has your songwriting shifted alongside entering this new phase of life?

When Bleachers [the band] came out, I wanted the first thing people hear to be a CliffsNotes of my life, which is why I wrote "I Wanna Get Better," because there's almost no poetry in it. It's like a document. It tells quick stories in three verses [and] literally rolls through my life story to that point. I wanted it to be the first thing people heard, so then I could back up and be like, "Now, you know everything. Now, let me explain more." And that has just deepened. I don't feel concerned with someone who's discovering the band now as much as I feel concerned with this ongoing relationship I have with the audience. I see my audience as distant friends, like we meet up every two years or so.

How do you feel Bleachers has evolved over the last 10 years?

Well, we've definitely become a band in a way that I didn't necessarily know would happen. My writing has evolved in this perfect line with my life. You know those roads when you're on an American highway, the fast road and the slow road next to it? I feel like my life is like the slow road and my writing is like the fast road. So, a lot of times if I am working on an album and I listen back, it almost feels like predicting the future. The band that we've turned into, it's taken all of us by surprise, and yet the writing was always on the wall. 

It's ironic because whether you see me as a producer or you understand Bleachers was a solo project, we're really more of a band than anyone out there right now in terms of how we're functioning. No matter how many people understand the project, we maintain a level of secrecy that has turned into a superpower. 

What do you mean by secrecy?

In the context of everything I do, some things have so many eyes and ears on them that it almost creates this protective layer around Bleachers. Because for everyone who's like, "Oh, that's that guy," there's a Bleachers person that's like, "We're a secret club." You know what I mean by that? At least that's how the band and I look at it, it almost feels like we will always have our own little cult world.

And yet, you’re playing Madison Square Garden this year.

That's a testament to people that come to the shows and what it means to be a real touring band. The audience is so tight, it's crazy. So, no matter how big it gets, it feels like I really know everyone or something. It's weird.

You have an ever-growing roster of artists you work with. How do you balance producing for other musicians alongside your own musical projects?

I don't have trouble switching gears. I don't know how I balance it. My life is way less structured than people might imagine. Touring is planned [but] a lot doesn't get planned. I go to the studio, and then maybe someone comes by or maybe I just write for a while. I tend to be way more productive if I'm making things without thinking what they are. And then one day you're like, "Oh, I see the framework of an album” and you hit that grinding period of making something. But a lot of my time is spent floating around until I start to see projects.

I feel like as a creative, multitasking can be thrilling.

Totally. Especially if it's under a general umbrella. If you write different things, and then they can all find homes. Sometimes I see it like planes taking off in my head. I just need to be making things. There's so much pressure to do so many things, and I don't really believe in that. 

You aren’t haunted by that need to do or be more.

[It] always makes me laugh when people call me productive. I'm like, "I just make music." A lot of people in my position have nine things going on. I come to the studio and I tour, but to me, that's enough. I still have a lot of obsessive thoughts about what I want to do and how I want to do it, but I don't feel the need to really do anything else. Never really have. 

You've worked with primarily female artists. Has that been a conscious choice or is that more like a nod to the state of pop?

I keep getting this question. I have no good answer for it. I always think that question should be for someone else to decide who's not me. To me, I feel like I see men everywhere. I'm more interested in what you think than I think.

I've always gravitated towards female artists in general, but in pop right now, I can’t even see any man that's on the same level as any of the pop girls. Maybe the 1975, who are pop-leaning but straddle indie-rock.

That's not pop. Pop is a very specific thing. One of the great hallmarks of a pop artist is that they're kind of out there alone, and there's this defiance in that. They're ring-leading and pushing culture this way and that way and the second you have your own little gang with you, regardless of the sound of the music, it ceases to be pop. Because then it becomes this group expressing something. It's just different to me.

It's pretty obvious who's killing right now. I feel like we've finally arrived at this place of people just liking what they like and the leading source being authenticity and soul. The people who are really happening are people who've been f-cking grinding and developing this amazing sound and perspective. I feel heartened by it. 

Are you referring to Charli xcx, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter or just more broadly?

Yeah. It's been such explosive years for those three, and I think they have something very powerful in common, which is serious f-cking years put into the craft. 

I keep thinking of Sabrina’s trajectory and how long she toured and how many albums she released.

I've been on Sabrina forever. It’s a source of f-cking pride, man. But it's also like she's been killing it forever—just now everyone agrees—which may be for some people to exonerate. Someone like Charli, I've known her forever. Bleachers came out around the same time that she did. You put it all together, and it's people having these moments come from just pushing this boulder further up the hill. It's not like these insane pivots of, "Now I'm Polka,” it's really inspired. I look at all Sabrina's work, and she's just crystallized more and more. I guess the lesson there is there was nothing wrong. It was just about staying the course. That's really what it is to be an artist. An artist doesn't run around and try on different outfits. An artist hears something and feels something, and then they make it regardless of what the f-ck anyone cares. 

How did you end up producing for Sabrina?

Well, I've known about her for a long time. I always liked her music. And then one day [Bleachers] played Radio City Music Hall, and I saw her in the front row. She's pretty unmissable, because she's tiny and has giant blonde hair. She doesn't look like other people. And I was like, "That was cool. Sabrina was at the show." Two weeks later I was at this thing, and she was there, and we actually met. That turned into a more formal sit-down talk about music here. The third time we met was the day that we made those songs.

I heard hints of Ariana Grande, Dolly Parton, and Joni Mitchell in Short n’ Sweet. How did the eclectic sound for the album come together?

The biggest reference that I've been feeling with Sabrina, which I don't think a lot of people have picked up on, is ELO. The first day that we got in the studio, me, Sabrina, and [songwriter] Amy [Allen], [it was] one of those legendary studio days. You only get so many in a lifetime. That day we made "Slim Pickins," "Please, Please, Please," and "Lie to Girls," which are three songs that ended up in the album, which I love. I just remember this ELO thing is so cool because they're folk-country or rock songs in structure and there's always a wooden instrument there and then it's acoustic guitar. Then there's these literally outer space-sounding synthesizers. One of the reasons why I love to reference ELO and Jeff Lynne is it feels like some of the instrumentation was being invented, and you can hear them blowing their own minds. A lot of her stuff really ungritted everything, and [we] just let it be real—and that's Dolly, too, sort of loose and wild. There's so much humor and depth with her that I wanted the music to sound like her, too.

She’s so adept at weaving in intensity with humor.

There's something really playful about all of it, and it cuts deeper when she says the intense stuff because of that spectrum. She has a Leonard Cohen thing to her, where she says something really intense and then really throws it away with a joke when you would never expect it. Maybe Nick Cave also, which are probably not comparisons that have been made. It's the reason why sometimes the pinnacle of a comedy can rip you apart more than the full-blown war movie. It's a little more reminiscent of real life.

What is your favorite song off of Short n' Sweet?

I'm the biggest "Sharpest Tool" head. I love that. And I know it's not fair because it's one that I worked on, but sometimes you work on something, and you also are a fan of it. It's very rare. It's really Sabrina I'm listening to in that song, and I'm not obsessing over my bits. I didn't write any lyric in that song. It was all her.

Has there ever been a discussion of a fun. reunion?

No. The Format, Steel Train, Anathallo… I'm more interested in those bands. Maybe one day I'll get really nostalgic, but I'm not there.

On that note, what drew you to curating the soundtrack for the Apple TV+ show about Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, The New Look?

It could have been my family's history or circles I grew up in, but [I] consumed everything I [could] about World War II, the Holocaust, and the occupation. So when I heard about the project, I imagined what I could do with it, which was this time where news flowed in a weird way and there were these wartime propaganda songs that were trying to create a marketed concept of winning or glory. I loved the idea that I could go back and remake the songs however I saw fit. Having Nick Cave sing "La Vie En Rose," having Florence [Welch] do "White Cliffs” [and] knowing what we know now. We could make it with all the knowledge of the future. That essentially is not very different than Romeo and Juliet.

What did you learn working with Taylor on The Tortured Poets Department, specifically?

So much. Every album we've done together, I've learned so much. That one, to me, was just the ultimate. It vacillates so much emotionally that I felt like it was truly what it’s like to be alive right now. So much of it is people just put out things that are definitive. Right now, it's like, "I'm hurt, I'm mad, I'm sweet," "I'm pissed, I'm joyful, I'm hateful." That album—because it's this crazy journey of love, lost love, betrayal, and hurt, and then even the escapism chapter with "Florida!!!" which is one of my favorite parts—I see it as our opus. It's a whirlwind. It was a whirlwind to make it.

I love it so much for that reason, because the only true goal when making an album is to capture the feeling of the moment. It's the only way you can make an album. For me, an album takes about a year for it to settle into where it's actually living and not just buzzing. But I learned a lot. It had me writing a little bit, just even in my own stuff, a little more flipping in and out of emotions, like one would in their head. TTPD moves quickly into different emotional territory, which I think is how a lot of us are living. I think that's why so many people are listening to it.

Is there a sonic direction or genre that you'd want to explore with Taylor that you haven't?

I never know until we do it. I don't really plan. Everything always happens in the moment in the room. I can have thoughts and feelings of like, "This would be cool, that would be cool," but I always find it clouds me in understanding where they're at. 

You worked on Lana Del Rey's last album Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. Have you been helping her shape her next album Lasso?

We have…yeah. A story for another time. The reason why I don't talk about things until they're out is very succinct: I like to let the music be the first entry point for people. I don't want to rob anyone of their experience of hearing it without context. The second you start talking about work that is coming, you're planting these seeds in people's head. 

You always post on Twitter, Instagram, like, "I'm always busy working. I'm working right now." How did that bit start?

I don't remember. I'm sort of resigned to remembering that the internet is for jokes. For some reason at some point, I just started tweeting back, "Can't talk, I'm at work." If you're looking for deeper meanings, that's how I see the internet, as a place for dumb bits.