Pop star Jack Antonoff has revealed why he continues singing love songs about his ex, actress Margaret Qualley, in his first time addressing their break-up earlier this year.
Antonoff – who serves as the frontman of the band Bleachers and also produces for pop stars like Taylor Swift – split from Qualley in July after three years of marriage.
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In the months since, Antonoff has been performing tracks written about The Substance star on stage; a process he described as “really beautiful” after much forethought about whether he’d scrap the love songs from his setlist.
“I sat long and hard with it and thought, ‘If I change the setlist …’ and in my gut there was a unanimous jury that said, ‘No, this is the deal. The deal I’ve made with my audience is that I’m going to tell you honestly how I feel and I’m going to risk at any moment having to stand behind it for f**king ever,’” Antonoff told the Guardian in a recent interview.
“It’s actually been really beautiful,” he added of performing the love songs, which are rumoured to include tracks like Dirty Wedding Dress and the Lana Del Rey ballad Margaret, featuring Bleachers.
“I mean, for people to come together, to know what I write a song about, to know how that must feel for me now, to know what that song means to you as an audience member, to just hold it all and sort of celebrate,” Antonoff said.
The singer, who has also dated Scarlett Johansson and Girls star Lena Dunham, went on to explain that he will continue singing tracks about his exes because he doesn’t want to “rewrite the past”.
“I don’t rewrite the past, I have no shame about the things I’ve said,” Antonoff explained.
“My life has been dedicated to making it impossible for me to rewrite the past, because I’m standing there, singing about how I felt during the good times, so when the bad times hit I can’t look myself in the mirror and pretend that those times didn’t exist,” he added.
For the musician, reliving his past in public is par for the course. “I would rather live through something publicly than even escape it privately,” he said.
It marks Antonoff’s first official public comments about his split from Qualley, though he did briefly address it at a show last month when a concertgoer requested he perform the Bleachers love song Let’s Get Married.
“Absolutely not,” Antonoff replied with a laugh in the viral moment. “Read the news, brother.”
Qualley’s representatives were quick to deny that cheating played a part in the pair’s split, saying “the narratives running in the press about Margaret and Jack are categorically untrue”.
“There are no trust issues. There was no infidelity or anything outside of respect and partnership in this relationship,” the statement read.