The producer on his work with Taylor Swift, his new Bleachers album and his greatest fears
Jack Antonoff doesn’t stop. Among the soundtrack works for Anne Hathaway’s new thriller Virgin Mary and his role as producer on Lana Del Rey’s highly anticipated album. StoveHow did the Grammy-winning artist, known for his collaborations with Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, find time to record a new album with his solo project Bleachers?
“I’m actually not as busy as I look,” Antonoff, 42, jokes from his home in New York. “I have the impression that I’m running around doing all this, but I’m pretty cold. It’s easy to find the time when you’re forced to do something.”
1. Your worst habit?
So many things come to my mind! I have the ability to think that I can get somewhere as quickly as possible. And I know that, but it’s like this sign that I think I can fit in a little bit more than what’s possible. There is a problem every day.
2. Your biggest fear?
I feel unfulfilled or like I have no purpose. I spent most of my energy trying to get to a place where I wouldn’t feel it. In the past, I felt really unfulfilled, especially at school, and it was a sad place to be. I founded my first punk band. [Outline] Around 13, and that’s when I started to find some relief, the ability to exist in a place that felt like the opposite of boring. But it’s a fear that’s still a real driving force for me and one that I have to keep in check.
3. The line that stays with you?
“The dream has to live inside you, you can’t live in the dream.” It was advice I got from a friend on how to do this job, survive, and not get caught up in it. It hit me hard when I heard this. I remember thinking this was the perfect way to explain staying alive creatively while also being present in the world and not getting caught up in it all. Who was your friend? Well, just a friend. Sometimes the best wisdom comes from those who are not public.
4. Your biggest regret?
I don’t really live with major existential regrets. I have a belief that one thing leads to another, and if something doesn’t work out, then room will be made for something else. But daily regrets are constant. These are usually very stupid or small things like ‘I should have woken up 20 minutes earlier because it would have made things so much easier.’ Or like ordering lunch. In fact, most of my regrets are food-related.
5. Tell us about your turning point.
I can say that it was my mid-20s when the first seeds of the first Bleachers album were planted. I’ve been making music for 10 years, but I felt like I was finally starting to put what was in my head onto records, and everything became a lot more intense in a good way, in terms of the work ethic and the seriousness around it. I stopped doing anything else.
When you’re young and in groups, people eventually start to drift away. A divide begins between people who want to be there forever and those who just see it as a fun thing. I remember finding myself more alone and determined.
6. Was the artwork or song you wanted your own?
Tom Waits’ Heart of Saturday Night or Bob Dylan New Morning. These are definitely not my favorite albums, but the way they exist completely by being themselves and in their own world… I love these types of albums. Heart of Saturday Night It was an album I fell into when I was in high school. I was really sad at the time. I was dealing with my first experience of death and grief and also falling in and out of love for the first time, and Tom Waits is the perfect soundtrack to it all. There’s a lot of sadness in his music, but there’s also a lot of romance and love.
7. If you could travel in time, where would you go?
Before I die I would go see my sister again [Antonoff’s younger sister Sarah died of brain cancer at 13]. I was 18 and graduating from high school when he died; So at this moment when you had to fly, I was on another planet. I was very different from my peers who were turning 18 and moving on to the next phase of their lives.
I decided that I wasn’t going to go to university, I was just going to make music and tour. I got a little record deal, which was incredible, and I felt like my artistic life was waking up. But I was also completely broken down and emotionally burned. It’s almost funny how extreme what I experienced at that time was. There are a few dead people I’d like to see again, but [Sarah’s] number one by far. Knowing what I know now, I would like to go and spend a day with him.
Bleachers’ new album Everyone for Ten Minutes is out now.
Robert Moran is deputy Spectrum editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
