For the last 18 months, Taylor Swift's "Eras" Tour conquered the pop music world, and in a show full of great moments, one stood out: "Cruel Summer," a song produced by Swift and her friend, Jack Antonoff:It's hard to overstate Antonoff's influence on pop music.He's written or produced some of the biggest songs with some of the biggest names in the business, including Lana Del Ray, Sabrina Carpenter and The Chicks.
But his career as a producer basically began when Swift decided that he was someone she wanted to work with. In his last Grammy speech, Antonoff credited Swift as being the one who "kicked that f*****g door open" for him."Literally!" he said.
Literally? "Well, metaphorically!" he laughed."It felt so validating.
Finally someone hears what I hear and isn't afraid to just say, 'Done.You know, press the records.'"He's been pressing a lot of records ever since.
Besides his producing gigs, Antonoff is the lead singer and the soul of his band Bleachers.And he owns 11 Grammys, including producer of the year in 2022.
He won it again in 2023, and 2024.These days when he's not on tour, Antonoff often works from his studio in L.A.
He says a lot of it is "just playing around," like the time he was on the synthesizer and found the Bleachers' signature sound – a riff that became "Rollercoaster," one of the band's biggest songs yet.He's become a reliable fountain of hit music, but Antonoff said he never knows when the creative lightning is going to strike: "You look at the story of any album, any song.
No one's ever like, 'We planned that day to write the best song we've ever written.We got coffee when we went in.
And we did it.And that's how that happened.' The the story is always like, 'So-and-so's plane was delayed.
And I got kicked out of my hotel in Reno 'cause of some s**t that this person did.Blah, blah, blah.
So I'm walking down the street and I hear this … ' You know, like, it's always this randomness.That buzz is where it all...