{"id":464373,"date":"2026-05-24T05:08:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T05:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/464373\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T05:08:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T05:08:17","slug":"jack-antonoff-on-living-in-the-spotlight-with-margaret-qualley-and-producing-taylor-swift-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/464373\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Antonoff on living in the spotlight with Margaret Qualley and producing Taylor Swift \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s the most punk-rock thing you can do when you\u2019re Jack Antonoff<\/a>, superstar producer, wingman to Taylor Swift<\/a> and leader of the rock troupe Bleachers? The answer, he recently concluded, was to invite his wife to be in one of his music videos. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a more consequential decision than it might otherwise be, given that she\u2019s the actor Margaret Qualley<\/a>, star of The Substance, Blue Moon and Ridley Scott\u2019s upcoming The Dog Stars, among others, and that the couple\u2019s combined celebrity has made them especially interesting to the outside world.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny time I sit back and think, \u2018Oh, but there\u2019s all this attention on us,\u2019 or this or that, my immediate reaction is, \u2018Oh, fuck that … You\u2019re not going to tell me what to do,\u2019\u201d Antonoff says from New York, where the couple live.<\/p>\n

When they tied the knot, in 2023, the ceremony was big news. The guests at the wedding, on Long Beach Island in New Jersey, the state where Antonoff grew up, included Swift, Channing Tatum, Zo\u00eb Kravitz and Lana Del Rey. A nearby street reportedly had to be shut down after fans flocked to see Swift go for a prewedding drink.<\/p>\n

Antonoff was well aware of the pandemonium that fame can trigger, given that he\u2019d worked closely with Swift since her blockbuster album 1989, which came out in 2014. And Qualley had been in the promotional video for the Bleachers single Tiny Moves, from the self-titled album the band released in 2024. <\/p>\n

But it hits differently when you\u2019re the one in the spotlight. Did they really want to invite more publicity by having her appear in another Bleachers promo?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Antonoff decided he wasn\u2019t going to let all the attention change how he makes music or lives his life. His wife had been in plenty of music videos before, including for her sister, Rainsford \u2013 their mother is the actor Andie MacDowell<\/a> \u2013 and she would be in them again.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur plan was always to make one video for every album, so we could telegraph how we are experiencing the world in that time as our lives go on, as partners. I thought it was a beautiful idea,\u201d Antonoff says.<\/p>\n

In his book, making a drastic allowance for his celebrity would be a defeat of sorts. That\u2019s why Qualley is in the video for You and Forever, the first single from Bleachers\u2019 new album, Everyone for Ten Minutes. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the message of its catchy track Take You Out Tonight, in which he weighs up the pros and cons of hitting the town with Qualley before deciding to go ahead, as life\u2019s too short not to. \u201cI gotta take you out and show you off tonight,\u201d he remarks in one line.<\/p>\n

\u201cChanging too much because of that gives it a power that it doesn\u2019t deserve,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s what Take You Out Tonight is about. This idea, \u2018I don\u2019t want to be seen, I don\u2019t want to be observed … But, damn, you look so good … Just fuck it: we\u2019ve got to go out.\u2019 Just living life. Because these things don\u2019t matter in a real way.\u201d <\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cI haven\u2019t become more private because of being seen publicly. I haven\u2019t become more angry. I haven\u2019t become more anything. I give that part of my life no power.\u201d <\/p>\n

Antonoff grew up in a small town in New Jersey, so it\u2019s perhaps not surprising that the songs he writes with Bleachers are steeped in a Springsteenesque yearning to look beyond the four walls of your suburban life and ask if there\u2019s something bigger out there worth striving for. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s no cynicism in his music, which is splashed with saxophone and which celebrates, without embarrassment or self-consciousness, the importance of human connection (on We Should Talk) and the transformative power of love (on You and Forever).<\/p>\n

But Everyone for Ten Minutes is by far the most fraught album Antonoff has made. He appreciates that, as someone with a certain amount of name recognition, his experiences are not always universal. But he does believe there is still a commonality to human life and that more and more people are rejecting both the toxicity of the internet and the idea that technology is a shortcut to happiness. That\u2019s a theme of The Van, one of the singles from the new album.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time in human history that pretty much all people on Earth happily reject the version of modernity they\u2019re being sold,\u201d Antonoff says. \u201cIt\u2019s not one thing \u2013 like, you know, \u2018Don\u2019t eat the spam.\u2019 It\u2019s like all the functions of our world are poisoning us, and we know that. And so everyone, regardless of how divided we feel, is on this journey to get back to their humanity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a connection to me between that moment in the world and this feeling in me of wanting to kick the door into the next phase of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bleachers:Bleachers: Jack Antonoff with his band <\/p>\n

Everyone for Ten Minutes features more personal songs, too. One of the most moving is I Can\u2019t Believe You\u2019re Gone, on which he talks about the grief that has been part of his life since he was 18 and his 13-year-old sister, Sarah, died from cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI obviously get very personal, but at the end of the day I wanted to write a song about the randomness of grief and loss, and how it\u2019s not a picture of the person or their favourite lake\u201d that reminds you of them but the most random thing \u2013 \u201csome dumb little toy or some Burger King crown or some weird thing that creates a sense memory to you that, even as years and years pass, brings you back into the utter depths of grief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antonoff is low-key and polite. But he is also among the highest-profile of music producers: in addition to collaborating with Swift, Del Rey<\/a> and St Vincent<\/a>, he has worked with Sabrina Carpenter<\/a>, on her album Man\u2019s Best Friend, and with Kendrick Lamar<\/a>, on his album GNX. <\/p>\n

His personal life has also always gained a lot of attention: in high school he dated his classmate Scarlett Johansson<\/a> and was later in a relationship with Lena Dunham<\/a>, the Girls creator. She writes about him with fondness in her new memoir, Famesick<\/a>, praising his \u201cinherent goodness\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"SuperstarSuperstar producer: Jack Antonoff on stage with Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium during the Eras tour, in 2024. Photograph: TAS2024\/Getty <\/p>\n

But it is for his work with Swift that he is most intimately associated \u2013 so much so that people jumped to conclusions when she looked to other producers for last year\u2019s album The Life of a Showgirl<\/a>. Had there been a tiff, a rift, a falling-out? <\/p>\n

Antonoff appreciates that their relationship will be under a microscope, but he says he has never felt joined at the hip with any artist.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Famesick by Lena Dunham: Health hazards of the Hollywood dream machineOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the ecosystem of popular music, everyone wants to infer a lot of drama on to things. But there\u2019s very little drama when making records. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I go on a journey with someone to make an album with them, I\u2019m not thinking about the next one or the one after that. If anything I feel very clear that what\u2019s happening is a miracle, and I\u2019m sort of sitting in that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI almost think it\u2019s more abnormal, or odd, to return\u201d to make another record with them. Whenever that happens \u201cI\u2019ve felt almost a bit shocked, like, \u2018Wow, we can still do this thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s always surprised to be invited back, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have that perspective also, because when I make my own albums I move around, and sometimes I want to be with the band, sometimes I want to be alone, sometimes I want to be with this producer. It\u2019s like everyone has this magical centre of themselves. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in such a time period where the currency is gossip and drama and whatnot that people want to infer a lot more than just the truth, which is people who really love each other just wanting everyone to make their best work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coming from New Jersey, he believes, has made him an eternal underdog, imbued with what he calls \u201cthe Irish spirit\u201d of growing up in a place steeped in immigrant music and a sense of outsiderness. <\/p>\n

So he\u2019s okay that not everybody gets Bleachers \u2013 the band aren\u2019t meant to be playlist fodder. He recalls pushing RCA, their label at the time, for the first Bleachers single to be I Wanna Get Better, which addresses the deaths of his sister and, in Iraq, of a cousin, as well as a bad acid trip. <\/p>\n

That song was both a rallying cry and a warning that a good time is not guaranteed. It remains his credo 12 years later.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould we end up on a playlist talking about someone who is dead, it can upset the vibe,\u201d he says. But he wanted to make sure that people knew what kind of music Bleachers were making. \u201cI don\u2019t want to trick anyone into coming into the tent. This is what I\u2019m writing about. This is what the band is about. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Everyone for Ten Minutes, Antonoff expands that focus on darkness to the fraught side of celebrity. \u201cWe had to board up all the windows and shoot out the drones,\u201d he sings on Dirty Wedding Dress, an epic rocker that is both a rumination on how much of a pain it is to get married with the world watching and a commentary on the internet and its culture of surveillance.<\/p>\n

He sees it as a personal song with a wider appeal. You don\u2019t have to be Taylor Swift\u2019s producer or the husband of a Hollywood star to know what it\u2019s like to be tracked or monitored whenever you step outside the house or any time you swipe on your phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been much more interested in finding the things about my life that were more human. The experience of being commodified … isn\u2019t everybody feeling [that]? <\/p>\n

\u201cEverything everyone does is commodified and thrown back in their face. Every choice they make, every text they send, every reel they look at. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so it just felt like, for the first time in my life, some of the lonely experiences of being \u2018public\u2019 were starting to become communal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone for Ten Minutes is released by Dirty Hit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the most punk-rock thing you can do when you\u2019re Jack Antonoff, superstar producer, wingman to Taylor Swift…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[144343,93,61,60,49792,7488,41695,86697,1834,8387,19459,6543],"class_list":["post-464373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-andie-macdowell","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jack-antonoff","tag-kendrick-lamar","tag-lana-del-rey","tag-margaret-qualley","tag-sabrina-carpenter","tag-scarlett-johansson","tag-st-vincent","tag-taylor-swift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}