Jack Antonoff: 'People would say: ‘You’re in a really successful band. What’s the problem?''

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/02/jack-antonoff-interview-lena-dunham-taylor-swift

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Jack Antonoff has some downtime in sunny Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It’s a few hours before a tour stop with his band Bleachers later that night, so what did he do during the day? Did Antonoff squeeze in some afternoon partying? Perhaps he palled around with one of his many celebrity friends? Or maybe he hit the beach while trying to avoid a legion of fans? No, in lieu of debauchery, Antonoff had a surprisingly normal – and some would say boring – afternoon.

“It consisted of me walking with my dad to the Apple Store to get our iPhones fixed,” he explains. “My parents flew out to meet me down here, and both mine and my father’s iPhone’s cracked. It was bizarre.”

After his father/son mini-trip he hung out in his room at the beachside Sonesta Hotel, before killing some time and hoping inspiration struck while crafting new tracks, which luckily for him isn’t all that rare. In the past few years, he’s experienced a level few in the industry ever achieve. From his massive, mainstream success as the lead guitarist for Fun., (who made a mark in 2012 with smash hit We Are Young), to side-project Bleachers (the 80s-influenced act he masterminded that spawned multiple alternative chart-toppers, including debut single I Wanna Get Better), or as one of the most in-demand songwriters of today who’s written career-altering smashes for the likes of Sara Bareilles (Brave) and, most recently, Taylor Swift.

“I don’t really look back or forward too much,” he says. “That’s not to say I live in the moment, because I struggle with that as well. But when I look at all of these things I’ve done, it all went well because there wasn’t that much thought put into them outside of writing great songs.”

There was a time not long ago when Antonoff was psyched about playing New York City’s 200-person capacity Mercury Lounge, never mind the arenas he’d later dominate with Fun. “Jack brings the exact same level of pride, dedication, and intensity to his work whether it be on a hit song or a show for 30 people at the Wayne firehouse,” notes his sister Rachel, a New York-based fashion designer who Jack is very close with. “I really admire that about him.”

By all accounts, Antonoff is an ordinary guy who happens to have experienced extraordinary success, and it’s through that normalcy that he channels his creativity. Perhaps that’s the quality that connects him with other bold-faced names who feel the same way about their art – whether it’s his girlfriend, Girls star Lena Dunham, known for her raw honesty, or Taylor Swift, an artist famous for exuding a normal, everyday girl vibe, despite the fact she’s a worldwide superstar.

“I’ve worked with a lot of people who are 1/100th as successful as her and work in $2,000 a day studios, listen to music through $1,000 speakers, order expensive sushi, have an entourage around them and make it this whole fucking thing,” he says of Swift.

“All of those distractions are designed to make the music less and less personal and compelling. I think one of the reasons why she’s so brilliant is that she just simplifies the process.”

For Antonoff and Swift, who collaborated on tracks like Out of the Woods, the first promotional single from her mega-successful fifth album 1989, that process consisted of Swift visiting Antonoff in the Brooklyn apartment he shares with Dunham. They would sit around, order lunch and get down to the nitty-gritty of songwriting.

Stepping away from Fun. was both exciting and terrifying

“What’s incredible to watch about Taylor is she writes the same way I remember writing when I was 15,” says Antonoff.

“Just having an idea and a guitar and working it out. Other times, I’d email her a track I put together that I think she’d like. Twenty minutes later, she’d send me a voice memo of her singing this chorus on top of the track, and 20 minutes after that, she’ll send me a verse idea.”

“Her songs are about these personal things that everyone goes through and that she goes through as well, whether it’s feeling bullied and ashamed, or picking yourself up after you’ve been knocked down,” he says.

It’s finding creative inspiration through personal details that both Antonoff and Dunham do, whether it’s with his songs with Bleachers or her scripts for Girls. Recently, a controversy erupted after Dunham published a humor piece in the New Yorker entitled “Dog or Jewish Boyfriend: A Quiz,” in which she listed qualities that Antonoff, who’s Jewish, and a dog both have. Dunham was quickly criticised for the article, which the Anti-Defamation League called “tasteless” and “playing with offensive stereotypes”.

Antonoff’s interview with the Guardian took place before the kerfuffle broke out, but at the time he explained “there’s an unspoken rule” that fodder from their personal lives could seep into anything they may write.

“We both trust each other’s creative process in that we would never put each other in a bad position while still being very true to this idea that we have to write what we feel,” he said. “I would never ask her not to write something, but I also completely trust that she would never put me in a weird position. Whether you write songs or TV shows, there is a mutual understanding.”

It’s that unflinching appetite for raw creativity – however personal – that shaped Antonoff’s interests and attitudes about show business, and led him to launch Bleachers, the success of which was doubted by many around him.

“There was a time very recently before Bleachers came out when it was this thing that my manager and I were super excited about and everyone else was like, ‘What are you doing?’ in an almost hostile way,” he says.

“People would say: ‘You’re in a really successful band. What’s the problem? But the funny thing is, there was no problem. With art and the work you do, it has to be constantly dictated by what you’re feeling and where you want to go with it. People in my life just had this big, ‘Why?’ And I think the album answered that question. I had to say these things and I had to write these songs. Stepping away from Fun. was both exciting and terrifying. The weight was all on me, and if I fucked it up, I’d fucked it up.”

Fortunately for Antonoff, all of his other projects have been well-received due in part to the fact that each area of his life – whether it’s Bleachers, Fun., his relationship with Dunham, or writing with Swift – informs one another. “I do constantly feel like everything I’m doing today is the culmination of all the work I’ve done in the past, and that’s something that’s very much with me,” he explains, as he begins to mentally gear up for that gig in Fort Lauderdale, the latest in Bleacher’s nationwide tour that stretches into the summer.

“All I have to do to continue to make things work is make great records, and that’s more important than having a crazy master plan.”

Sounds like fun.

Bleachers are on tour until 13 June. Strange Desire is out now