Along with making his own music as Bleachers, Jack Antonoff has earned a reputation as a producer for some of today’s biggest pop stars. He worked with Taylor Swift on a number of songs, and also produced recent works for Clairo, Lana Del Rey, and Lorde. Of course, working with such big names is going to teach him a thing or two about the art of crafting a pop song — and it definitely did.
Antonoff described working with Lorde and Del Rey in a recent digital cover interview with Billboard. Detailing what he learned from the two acclaimed musicians, Antonoff said:
“You’re always learning from everyone around you. Lana taught me that sometimes that thing that just comes out of thin air is the thing, and you don’t even touch it. Ella [Lorde], on the other hand, teaches me what can happen if you keep chipping away at something over and over. The idea of the process is these big egos and big attitudes [colliding], but once you get into that very vulnerable place of working and writing, everyone’s just a half-broken sponge. There’s so much being passed around, and there’s so much information and so much emotion, and that’s why I love it so much. It’s really this rarefied space.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, the producer noted just how groundbreaking it is that Taylor Swift has opted to re-record her first six albums. “[It] is monumental. People approached it with so much cynicism, and then, just like everything she does, there was no f*cking bit,” he said. “And people love to be like ‘This changes the game!’ about so much sh*t. This actually changes the game. And good! Let people who want to put artists in antiquated deals feel some fear about the power of artists. It’s a classic tale that is representative of the assumption that people suck, and they don’t.”
Read Antonoff’s full digital cover interview with Billboard here.