Jack Antonoff on the “randomness” of creativity

Over the past 18 months, Taylor Swift's “Eras” tour has taken over the world of pop music, and in a show full of great moments, one stood out: “Cruel Summer,” a song produced by Swift and her boyfriend Jack Antonoff:

It's hard to overstate Antonoff's influence on popular music. He has written or produced some of the biggest songs with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Lana Del Ray, Sabrina Carpenter and The Chicks. But his career as a producer basically started when Swift decided that she wanted to be someone she wanted to work with.

In his final Grammy speech, Antonoff referred to Swift as the one who “opened that damn door” for him. “Literally!” he said.

Literally? “Well, metaphorically!” he laughed. “It felt so validating. Finally someone hears what I hear and isn't afraid to just say, 'Done. You know, press the records.'”

Since then he has released many records. In addition to his gigs as a producer, Antonoff is the lead singer and soul of his band Bleachers. And he owns 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 LA studio. He says a lot of it is “just messing around,” like when he sat at the synthesizer and discovered the Bleachers' signature sound — a riff that became “Rollercoaster,” one of the band's biggest songs to date.

He has become a reliable source for hit music, but Antonoff said he never knows when creative lightning will strike: “You look at the history of an album, a song. Nobody ever says, 'We planned this day to write this.' The best song we've ever written. When we walked in we were given coffee. And that's how it happened. The story is always like this: “So-and-so's flight was delayed because this person did something.” I'm walking down the street and I hear this… “You know, it's always this randomness where everything comes from. I never want to put myself in a position where any of it feels normal.”

And nothing is remotely normal in Jack Antonoff's life. Antonoff was born and raised in New Jersey. He formed his first band in high school. But success came slowly. In 2017, “Sunday Morning” visited Antonoff at his family home, where he had lived until he was 29. (He already had a number 1 hit.)

Last week he was back East for a personal milestone: His band played Madison Square Garden in New York City, and the butterflies came out. “Most of the time, even when a show is sold out, I actually have a certain level of surprise.

And let's talk about milestones: His first Broadway show just opened. Antonoff wrote the music for the play “Romeo + Juliet.” “When I think of 'Romeo + Juliet,' and I've done that in music, I think of hope and love and finding something and dealing with it against all odds,” he said. “I always forget everything Death. And so I started to go back and sew that into the score a little bit, a little bit, I didn't know, but it suggested that it was going to be terrible. “Because I forgot!”

His own love life is less problematic. 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.

Jack Antonoff is 40 years old, married to the woman of his dreams and possibly on his way to his fourth Grammy for Producer of the Year. He is on fire.

It feels, he says, surreal: “And it continues to be surreal, because one of the only promises of my work is how fleeting – not the performance, not the audience, but that kind of success. So there's never a moment where I'm not surprised by everything.

You can stream Bleachers' latest album, titled “Bleachers,” by clicking on the embed below (free Spotify registration required to hear tracks in full):

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The story was produced by John D'Amelio. Publisher: Remington Body.