Jack Antonoff: ‘I don’t give a shit about radio or sales or anything. I’m only trying do something great’

“I don’t give a shit about radio or sales or anything. I’m only trying do something great,” says Jack Antonoff. Despite what it may seem, the tone isn’t aggressive. The New Jersey native is direct and elaborates on his answers, but he’s a nice, polite guy. And the day of the interview, March 31, happened to be his birthday. The busiest man in the music industry was turning 42, and instead of celebrating with his wife, the actress Margaret Qualley, he was at the Rosewood Hotel in London granting this interview to EL PAÍS’ fashion supplement ICON under heart-shaped balloons brought by his team. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a part of the job I dislike,” he replies to apologies for spoiling such a special day.

Slim, wiry, and youthful-looking, he maintains that nerdy indie-boy look he’s always cultivated: glasses he’s constantly taking on and off, a cat-print shirt, jeans... He jokes that he looks like Bad Bunny. “He looks like my cousin or something,” he laughs, pointing to his face. ”Okay, he’s much more attractive than me, but don’t you see?” Since we’re on the subject, did he see his Super Bowl performance? He did, and really enjoyed it. “I think a lot of people have a lot of rage for good reason, but when you see someone who has a lot of joy performing, it’s very subversive nowadays”, he replies.

Good things inspire you. When I see Michael Jordan, I don’t feel like playing basketball, but to get better at what I do

So who is Jack Antonoff? None other than the person who has defined the sound of success in the last decade, especially his work with female artists. He has produced Sabrina Carpenter, Lorde, Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, Clairo, FKA Twigs, and, above all, Taylor Swift. From her album 1989 (2014) to The Tortured Poets Department (2024), they were inseparable. After that, they each went their separate ways. The New Yorker magazine perfectly described Antonoff’s clientele, writing that “he has worked with not quite every pop star with artistic inclinations or artist with pop aspirations, but not far off.” In 2017, the website Stereogum ran an article with the headline: “In the future, all albums will be produced by Jack Antonoff.” It was a joke, but it had a certain depth: his influence has reached the point where there are artists who sound as if he produced them, even though he didn’t. Some even add him to their credits, just in case. The line between similarity and plagiarism is very thin. If the success of a formula is measured by the quantity and quality of its imitators, the Antonoff touch is the Coca-Cola of pop.

And that has made him the most awarded producer of this decade: Antonoff won the Grammy for Producer of the Year three times in a row (2022, 2023, and 2024), and in 2026, thanks to his work with Kendrick Lamar, he joined the exclusive “Big Four” club, the owners of all four major Grammys. It’s an achievement no other producer had accomplished—earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records—and only three artists: Adele, Billie Eilish, and Christopher Cross.

Antonoff began his journey to the Big Four in 2013 as a musician. His band at the time, Fun, won the awards for Best New Artist and Best Song for the hugely popular “We Are Young.” He has won Best Album not once, but three times, for three albums with Taylor Swift. The one award he was missing, Record of the Year, came in 2016 with “Luther” by Kendrick Lamar.

I like working on albums under pressure. For example, Melodrama by Lorde, or GNX by Kendrick Lamar

Today, however, we speak with him as the leader of Bleachers, his band since 2013, which will release its fifth album, the very Springsteen-esque Everyone For Ten Minutes, on May 22. The distance between Jack Antonoff the producer and Jack Antonoff the musician can be measured, albeit approximately: Bleachers is a band that fills Madison Square Garden, whose latest album reached number 5 in the U.K. and number 62 in the U.S., accumulating 6 billion streams. A more than respectable success, but it’s nothing compared to the stratospheric numbers he achieves with the stars he works with. According to conservative estimates, the music Antonoff has produced has sold close to 120 million records, or 90 billion streams.

But he insists that Bleachers is what makes him happiest. “When I play, I don’t think of anything else. All day long I think of so many things, I have so many anxieties and so many transient thoughts. And I think in life if you can find one thing that quiets all the noise, you’re really lucky. And when I play, I don’t think about anything.” His commitment to the band is total. He says he enjoys every second he spends with them. That’s why, he says, he plays every concert as if it were the last night of his life: “When I finish, everything hurts… Because I give it my all. I have scars on me from times I fucked myself up on stage. I don’t know any other way to do it, and that’s just how it’s gonna be.”

Beneath that demeanor lies a tireless worker. “One time when I was like nine years old, my family went on vacation to Florida, and I went to the gift shop and I just started helping out there, and I basically spent the whole vacation working at the gift shop. That’s just how I am,” he laughs. He started playing music at 15 in the New Jersey indie scene and spent many years struggling financially. Until the age of 27 he lived in the basement of his parents’ house, a well-to-do couple who, he says, always supported him. “When I was first starting out, they were sort of like, ‘try it for a year.’ But then when I was 18, my sister got sick and died. Then they didn’t give a shit about anything besides whatever made me happy. So that was an example of how sometimes the most real, terrible things in life lead people to really not give a shit about the small stuff.”

“The whole ancestral part of my life is to survive, to have a job and provide. My grandparents and great-grandparents, all of them, they were all European. They were all Polish and Russian, and their whole lives were about survival. That’s why they came to America, for survival. And then my parents’ generation was still very much about survival, getting a job, going to college to survive… And then I come along and I’m this generation where I just sort of severed the whole tie… I got in a van when I was 15. I stopped working hard at school. I didn’t go to college… and it was very powerful to me,“ he recalls. ”When I started, the job bubble hadn’t yet burst, and the approach was still to get a degree to get a good job and a nice house. I just remember thinking, this is bizarre. I’m not just leaving my home, I’m leaving this lineage…And it weighed heavily on me."

When you have people’s attention, you can do whatever you want with it; you can talk to them, you can surprise them

You have to be really sure of yourself to make it in the music industry without a penny until you’re 27. Many quit before then. I earned some money for the first time when I was 26 or something, that was the first time that I made like a little bit of money touring. I remember at the end of that year I made a small salary, and I remember being so proud. It’s partially sweet and partially fucked up that American artists think that they don’t have the right to exist… me and my friends, the way we did it, sleeping on floors, playing to play, making no money, losing money. It wasn’t sad times, it was very powerful.

Aren’t you romanticizing precarity? when I was 15, I was in the van, I was the coolest. When I was 18, I was a loser because all my friends were going to college. When I was 21, I was the coolest because all my friends were fucking rotting in college. When I was 24, I was a loser because all my friends were moving out and having jobs, right? When I was 26, I was kind of cool again because all my friends realized that they hated their jobs and I was still in the van. But it— I’ve noticed that though, it’s like in different moments in life you’re kind of a loser or a hero based on your choices, and you can’t care, you know what I mean? I didn’t like it when I would come home from a tour and everyone in the neighborhood would be like, do you think you’ll ever make it? Yeah, it didn’t feel good, but it didn’t change me.

At 15, I got into a van, I didn’t go to college, I broke with all those things that were taken for granted. And it weighed heavily on me

But the current obsession is reaching the largest possible audience, filling stadiums, counting streams in the millions... It’s important that musicians can make a living, but we’ve reached a point where art has been so monetized that it’s become full of opportunists. When I see my favorite musicians play, they do it because it’s what they love. The musicians in my own band were struggling just two years ago, playing at weddings to make ends meet and record their albums. They lived like that because they love playing. Monetization complicates everything. How crazy is it that we live in a world where a lot of fan communities now talk about streams and who sells out what... And I just think we’re living in this transitional time where it shouldn’t be shocking to see someone who just loves playing music, but it fucking is.

How do you distinguish a true artist from an opportunist? Good things inspire you. You don’t want to imitate them, but rather improve what you do. When I watch Michael Jordan play basketball, I don’t want to play basketball, I want to be more great at what I do.

The history of popular music can be read, in part, as the story of the producers who captured the sound of their time. Take, for example, some of Antonoff’s favorites. George Martin, with the Beatles, built the language of the modern album. Brian Eno redefined what could be done in a studio with David Bowie, Talking Heads and U2. Jeff Lynne, with Electric Light Orchestra, created a sound so recognizable that it became the definitive reference point for the soundscape of the 1980s. Jack Antonoff is the heir to that tradition, that of the visionary producer. The idea is to take the essence of an artist and make it bigger, cleaner. He has absorbed the key elements of the American sound that has dominated radio stations since the 1980s and is able to adapt it to each of his clients. That’s why his influence is found on albums as diverse as Lorde’s Melodrama, Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, and Kendrick Lamar’s GNX. But when his work is discussed, it’s emphasized that he doesn’t impose, he listens. Critic Rob Sheffield summed it up with a phrase that has resonated: while most top-tier super-producers are “pop scientists,” Antonoff is “a humanist.”

I met Lana Del Rey at a diner, we walked around the city and then she came over to my house and we made three songs, some of my favorite songs ever

How did you go from musician to producer? I always did both, it’s just that at first I didn’t know one of them was called “producing.” Singing and playing in a band and performing is one love. Touring is a different love. Recording music and being in the studio is a whole other love. They’re very different things, and I just always really enjoyed all of them. When I was young, we’d travel from place to place on tour, and then I’d record what we did. I also liked recording my friends. It came naturally to me to have ideas and want to develop them. At 15, I didn’t say “I’m a producer,” but deep down it’s not so different from my work now. I do the same things: help my friends, compose my own music, and play live.

How do you choose who you work with? There’s this idea of what the music industry is like, which is “get me Jack.” It’s not really like that. All the stuff I’ve ever done, there’s always a funny story behind it. I was downstairs at Electric Lady [studio in New York], Kendrick was upstairs, and my friend Soundwave was his producer. He said, come on up, let’s fuck around. I came up, started playing around and chatting, didn’t leave for three years... I met Lana Del Rey, we went to a diner, had coffee, and then walked around the city, and then she came over and we made three songs that day, some of my favorite songs ever. It’s very rare that I get a call and then someone calls me. If that does happen, then it’s usually like, oh fun, let’s meet for coffee… but it’s pretty quick that you understand if you can make something with someone, if you have that special thing, and it’s very strange how much it has nothing to do with how much you love their work. That’s why, when people ask me who I’d like to collaborate with, I don’t know what to say. With many of my favorite artists, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. You have to really get to know the person. I have a lot of respect for this, and I know I can’t work with just anyone. It’s like being in love. It works or it doesn’t. It’s like you can’t fake it.

Rosalía is brilliant and she’s also a friend of mine; I love her very much. I see her from time to time and she’s a wonderful person

Sometimes it seems like they seek me out for albums that, in principle, arrive at crucial moments for an artist: after a huge success or after a long hiatus. I like working on albums under high pressure. For example, Lorde’s Melodrama. There was tremendous pressure. Kendrick Lamar’s GNX was also crazy high pressure. With The Chicks it was the same, because they hadn’t released anything for ages. But I love that. When you have people’s attention, you can do whatever you want with it, you can talk to them, you can surprise them. And on top of that, I think it’s when you can take the most risks, when you have the most room to try something that nobody expects.

In a text about Bleachers that your team sent, it reads: “I have room for my wife, my family, my band, and my audience. If you’re not part of those groups, you’re nothing.” Yeah, well... I just want to be very focused on the people I’m focused on. Actually, these days nobody gives a shit about the rest of the world, because it’s not possible. Someone has to say it. There’s an amazing psychological study… it basically says that the human being, after about 125 people, can’t really have empathy beyond that. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? There are nuances, but if you think about humanity at its best, the most fulfilled people are people who have a small community. And this is the thing, all my life I’ve known that I belonged to a small community. Even if I play a concert for a lot of people, it’s still small. The problem is that, suddenly, the great lie of our time has emerged: that everything has to be for everyone. And it’s terrible. It damages the soul, it damages art, it’s complete nonsense. I have no problem saying it. I feel like I have to repeat it like a mantra: only my people can see me.

Is that what you mean by the album title Everyone For Ten Minutes? I read that it comes from the iPhone’s AirDrop setting, which lets you share files with “everyone” for 10 minutes before it closes. Yes, one day I saw “Gone now” in AirDrop and I thought it was really cool: I can’t be accessible to the whole world… if you’re walking around New York City and you have your whole Airdrop on, you will get so many dicks and swastikas. I’m obsessed with the question of what community means in the modern world. I’m just obsessed with what’s community in modernity? There’s no such thing as subculture anymore, right? It can’t exist because, when I was growing up and kids in the scene would tell me stories about GG Allin, I would sit there and just imagine it— or My Bloody Valentine— and be like, how loud was the show? Now I can just look it up. So there has to be a new kind of wonder. And it might be as simple as paying attention only to the people who matter to you the most.

Given that Jack Antonoff is one of the most sought-after brands in the industry, it sounds contradictory. Look, here’s the thing: while art has always been monetized—selling a painting, a book—this is the first time that every interaction with art is monetized. Every time you listen to my record, it makes them money. Every time you read a thing on your phone, it makes money— so it’s why I love the personal experience, like being in the water… the experience that what you’re doing is making someone else money is hard on the soul. I’m not prudish, I love playing big shows, I love it when people hear my music, but I just want to be clear, that just because I make these records that are in the mainstream and I have this band, it’s not for everyone. It’s for anyone, it’s not for everyone It’s for each individual, but not for everyone as a whole.

What do you think of Rosalía? She’s brilliant and she’s also a friend of mine; I love her. I just get to hang out with her every once in a while and she’s just wonderful. The way I interpreted her album was resetting to the most classic version of high art. So like all her imagery and the classical music and the almost Renaissance-ness of it all… it was like laughing in the face of everyone trying to take it short.

AI is going to be incredible. There will be many bad things, but in art... it’s going to be something else entirely

What do you think is going to happen with artificial intelligence in music? I know what’s going to happen. It’s going to be amazing… There’s going to be so many bad things, but the work is going to be incredible. I think there’s going to be a cliff and a lot of people are going to fall off it, and then what will be left will just be so many great artists boiling themselves down to the most visceral version of themselves. Let me give you an example. I like to watch people build, like lay bricks… when I watch someone build a house, I think that’s amazing that a person can do that… Recently I got shown a video of a robot doing it, and I felt nothing. I think the meaning of being alive is to create things. There’s going to be a lot of socioeconomic destruction because of AI. But in art… it’s going to be something else. In fact, it already is. No one gives a fuck when they hear Tupac’s voice remade. No one cares.

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