Producer’s Cut: Jack Antonoff
By Aki Sanjay
As of 2024, Jack Antonoff had produced 341 songs. The number seems at first incomprehensible – a sheer mass of music sprung from the mind of one man – but Antonoff’s work is pop trademarked, an 80s inspired, guitar-heavy sound that lies behind some of the most popular artists of the decade. Lorde, Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey: Antonoff is a craftsman, creating stars in sound.
Antonoff, a New Jersey native, is only forty-one, but he has already established himself as the producer of a generation. His first encounter with the music industry was in high school, when he and several of his childhood friends formed the punk rock bank Outline. After releasing three albums, the band, led by Antonoff, embarked on its first tour, playing in anarchist bookstores and living out of a parent’s minivan. “Half the time no one would show up or the equipment would be too fucked up to play,” Antonoff said in a 2014 interview with Vulture, “but that’s when I fell in love with touring.” His second band, Steel Train, got a record deal in Antonoff’s senior year of high school, and he immediately set off on another tour – he didn’t stop for eleven years.
In 2008, Antonoff was invited to join the band fun., alongside Nate Ruess and Andrew Dost. The three moved back to New Jersey for a year, where they recorded Aim and Ignite, fun.’s debut album, in the living room of Antonoff’s childhood home. The band was an instant hit, but Antonoff was slowly developing his own interests, gradually leaning away from the whirlwind of tour life. He turned instead to his laptop: folders of music filled with ideas that he had never explored on stage. He was already interested in producing, despite having little training in production software. “I never read the manual,” he shared with Sound on Sound, “I just slowly learnt. There’s still things that are crazy I don’t know, but I almost don’t want to know too much.” His work in Steel Train had largely been about noise; the band was loud, layered, and multi-tracked, rich with the motifs that would come to define Antonoff’s career. In fun., these elements were drawn out into the spotlight as Antonoff learnt how to strip down his sound. Working with acclaimed producer Jeff Bhasker, Antonoff began to focus on feeling, shedding his early multitracking for effective, purposeful recording. Recording ‘We Are Young’, the band’s breakout single, was a difficult experience, he recollects: “Everything about it was tough to get right. The tempos, the mix. It was just a mess until it wasn’t.”
Co-writing was the next step for Antonoff, albeit a difficult one. It quickly grew apparent that he had to establish a brand for himself, to differentiate his work from the growing wave of indie-rock sweeping across the country. Eager for experience, he joined songwriting sessions for Rihanna, and soon after the song ‘Sweetie’ alongside Carly Rae Jepsen. ‘Sweetie’, alongside Antonoff’s collaboration with Sara Bareilles, put him on the map: the year after, he wrote and produced Taylor Swift’s ‘Sweeter than Fiction’, cementing his place as a writer and producer. Since then, Antonoff has exploded into the production scene; he is the force behind some of the most definitive albums of the decade, including Lorde’s Melodrama and Clairo’s Sling.
Antonoff is a unique producer, melding a range of inspirations to form an instantly recognisable sound. He is chameleonic: a manically energetic, lower-case-using professional, the van-driving punk rocker, and pop-crafter supreme. Speaking to Tom Doyle, Antonoff reflected on his process; “[It’s] all record-specific,” he said, referring to the creation of ‘sound worlds’. Each album he has worked on has a different vision, and varied instrumentation to match – “The first Bleachers album and the 1989 Taylor stuff were really centred around the Juno 6,” he continued, sitting by the synthesizer in question. “That instrument has such a sadness and a glory all at once.”
Synthesizers are truly inescapable in any Antonoff world. Although he has played with a variety of styles, Antonoff usually centres around synthesizer, guitars, and driving, low horn lines. Listen to St Vincent’s ‘Los Ageless’ or Florence and the Machine’s ‘Free’, and you will hear it immediately. It is a layered sound tied intimately to pop music today, and this isn’t an accident: Antonoff’s influence has defined the genre, pulling in elements of 80s trend, acoustic Americana heart, and the punk-rock beats that he grew up with. The chaotic multitracking of Steel Train has evolved into a careful layering, a push-and-pull of organic and electric sound. A technique he uses often is bass-doubling, where he doubles low-end Moog bass parts with a real bass. The effect layers a live instrument and a synthesizer, allowing for a pulsing, solid foundation to sit beneath the track.
Nowhere is Antonoff’s signature clearer, though, than in the Bleachers albums. Formed in 2013 as a solo project, Bleachers has since expanded to include longtime touring musicians Mikey Hart, Sean Hutchinson, Evan Smith, Michael Riddleberger, and Zem Audu, but it is still undeniably Antonoff’s passion project. In 2024, the band released their fourth, self-titled studio album, a 22-song expedition of gentle synth melodies, earnest lyrics, and echoing guitar (highlights include ‘I Am In Your Hands’ and ‘Me Before You’). It’s a stark difference in many ways from their earlier hits ‘Rollercoaster’ and ‘Don’t Take the Money’, Springsteen-esque crowd pleasers designed for stadiums. Despite the tonal shift, though, the energy is no less present, and Bleachers is only growing more popular.
Despite his booming presence in the music industry, Antonoff is a private person and wishes to remain one. He married actress Margaret Qualley in 2023, and the two have largely kept their lives separate from their industries. Antonoff, at the end of the day, is all about the music. As for what comes next – well, it’s impossible to know. Antonoff has established himself in the pop world, but he’s constantly looking for new avenues. “The cosmic joke about writing and recording,” he said to Doyle, “is you could do something for eight months and then wake up in the morning, get in the shower, and hum a melody that was better than anything you did. That’s just it. You have to be ready to follow that.”
If you’re interested in checking out some of Antonoff’s work, listen to ‘Stop Making This Hurt’ by the Bleachers, ‘About You’by the 1975, and ‘Amoeba’ by Clairo