{"id":688694,"date":"2026-05-23T03:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T03:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/688694\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T03:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T03:41:15","slug":"jack-antonoff-interview-the-producer-on-his-work-with-taylor-swift-his-new-bleachers-album-and-his-greatest-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/688694\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Antonoff interview: The producer on his work with Taylor Swift, his new Bleachers album and his greatest fears"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jack Antonoff doesn\u2019t stop. Between soundtrack work on Anne Hathaway\u2019s new thriller Mother Mary and his producer role on Lana Del Rey\u2019s much-anticipated album Stove, how did the Grammy-winner \u2013 famed for his collaborations with Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter \u2013 find time to record a new album with his solo project Bleachers?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not actually quite as busy as I seem,\u201d Antonoff, 42, jokes from his home in New York. \u201cThere\u2019s this impression that I\u2019m running around doing all these things, but I\u2019m pretty chill. Time is easy to find when you\u2019re compelled to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JackJack Antonoff (centre, light brown jacket) with the touring members of his Bleachers project.Alex Lockett<\/p>\n

1. Worst habit?
So many come to mind! I have an ability to think I\u2019ll be able to get places quicker than I can. And I know it, but it\u2019s like this tick I have where I think I can fit in a bit more than is possible. It\u2019s a problem every day.<\/p>\n

2. Greatest fear?
Feeling like I\u2019m unfulfilled or have no purpose. I\u2019ve spent a lot of my energy trying to get to a place where I won\u2019t feel that. In the past, particularly in school, I felt really unfulfilled and it\u2019s a sad place to be in. I started my first punk band [Outline] around 13ish and that was when I started to find some relief, some ability to exist in a place that felt like the opposite of boring. But it\u2019s a fear that\u2019s still a real driving force for me, and something I have to keep in check.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

3. The line that has stayed with you?
\u201cYou have to have the dream live in you, you can\u2019t live in the dream.\u201d It was advice I received from a friend around how to do this work and survive and not get wrapped around it. It hit really hard when I heard it. I remember thinking it was a perfect way to describe how to stay creatively vital but also exist in the world and not get taken away by all of it. Who was the friend? Eh, just a friend. Sometimes the best wisdom comes from the non-public ones.<\/p>\n

4. Biggest regret?
I don\u2019t really live with any large existential regrets. I have that belief that one thing leads to another thing and if something doesn\u2019t work out then it makes space for something else to. But daily regrets are a constant. They\u2019re usually something really stupid or small, like \u2018I should have woken up 20 minutes earlier because it would\u2019ve made things much easier\u2019. Or, like, a lunch order. Actually, most of my regrets are based around food.<\/p>\n

\"AntonoffAntonoff with two of his iconic collaborators, Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift.Getty Images<\/p>\n

5. Tell us about your turning point.
I would say it was my mid-20s, around the first seeds of what was going to become the first Bleachers album. I was 10 years into making music, but I felt like I finally started getting what was in my head onto the records and it all got a lot more intense, in a good way, in terms of the work ethic and the seriousness around it. I kind of stopped doing anything else.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re younger and in bands, people ultimately start to fall away. A separation begins between the people who want to be there forever and the people who are just treating it as a fun thing to do. I remember just finding myself more alone and determined.<\/p>\n

6. The artwork or song you wish was yours?
Tom Waits\u2019 The Heart of Saturday Night or Bob Dylan\u2019s New Morning. They\u2019re not necessarily my favourite albums ever but the way they exist completely as themselves and in their own worlds \u2026 I love that kind of album. The Heart of Saturday Night was an album I got into in high school. At that time I was really sad. I was dealing with my first experience of death and grief and I was also falling in love \u2013 and out of love \u2013 for the first time and Tom Waits is the perfect soundtrack for all that. He has so much sadness in his music but also so much romance and love.<\/p>\n

\"AntonoffAntonoff and his wife, actress Margaret Qualley.Getty Images<\/p>\n

7. If you could time-travel, where would you go?
I\u2019d go back to see my sister again before she died [Antonoff\u2019s younger sister Sarah died of brain cancer at 13]. I was 18 when she died and graduating high school \u2013 so this moment when you\u2019re supposed to be flying, I was just on another planet. I was so out of step with my peers who were turning 18 and going on to the next phase of their life.<\/p>\n

I had made the decision that I wasn\u2019t going to go to college, that I would just play music and tour. I got a small record deal, which was incredible, and it felt like my artistic life was awakening. But I was also completely crashing out and burning emotionally. It\u2019s almost comic how extreme what I went through at that time was. There are a few people who are dead who I\u2019d love to see again but [Sarah\u2019s] by far the number one. I\u2019d just want to go and spend a day with her, knowing what I know now.<\/p>\n

Bleachers\u2019 new album Everyone for Ten Minutes is out now.<\/p>\n

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\"RobertRobert Moran<\/a> is Spectrum deputy editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-688694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}