“Individuals name it Brat Summer season — it must be known as ‘artist improvement summer time,’ ” Jack Antonoff jokes on a mid-September afternoon, sitting on the rooftop of New York’s Electrical Girl Studios and reflecting on the previous few months in pop music. Charli XCX, whose brat album helped outline the season, is an previous pal of Antonoff’s — they co-headlined a 2015 tour known as Charli and Jack Do America — and he factors out that her 2024 success speaks to a bigger motion of artists creating their very own mainstream niches as a substitute of latching on to developments.
“Sabrina [Carpenter], Charli and Chappell Roan — the three of them have had this shared expertise of artists who’ve been crystallizing, and that’s the place you get gems,” Antonoff says of a trio of pop skills who’ve dominated current cultural discourse. “And that’s the story of being an artist. That’s true artist improvement. And it doesn’t matter the place we’re in tech or streaming or something — the one strategy to win is to create your personal language.”
This yr, Antonoff has had a direct hand in abetting creative evolution at completely different ranges of stardom — serving to a longtime collaborator, Taylor Swift, shape-shift whereas staying on prime of the pop world, in addition to a rising artist, Carpenter, safe her place on the A-list. For the latter, Antonoff produced and co-wrote 4 songs on Carpenter’s new album, Brief n’ Candy — together with her first Billboard Sizzling 100 chart-topper, “Please Please Please” — permitting the pop singer’s sardonic tics to shine on her strategy to arena-headliner standing.
“Nobody deserves it extra,” Antonoff says of the previous Disney Channel star, who has launched six albums by the age of 25. “Sabrina’s been quietly rising, and her albums have been getting extra superior, and she or he’s been honing her sound and performances. It’s not like she simply popped onto the scene — this has been a decade of grinding towards it.”
Throughout the week that Brief n’ Candy was launched in August, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Division — on which Antonoff contributed to 16 songs throughout each of its volumes — spent its fifteenth week atop the Billboard 200, the longest run at No. 1 of any Swift challenge. Swift introduced The Tortured Poets Division on the night time of the 2024 Grammys, the place earlier full-length Midnights was awarded album of the yr and she or he set the file for probably the most profession wins within the class.
Amy Lombard
This yr, Antonoff’s work with Swift and Carpenter — together with the self-titled fourth album from his long-running band, Bleachers, which arrived in March — might assist him notch his sixth consecutive Grammy nomination for a producer of the yr, non-classical, a class that he has gained the previous three years. If Antonoff takes residence the trophy on the 2025 ceremony, he would set a file as the one four-peat within the 50-year historical past of the award.
“It could be a extremely [nice] resolve to a extremely particular interval,” says Antonoff’s supervisor, Jamie Oborne. “If it’s based mostly on the work alone and the broad spectrum of labor, I can’t think about anybody else profitable.”
As a substitute of functioning as a victory lap for Swift, The Tortured Poets Division was emotionally unguarded and knowingly messy, dividing critics and galvanizing quick fan devotion on its strategy to the largest first-week debut of her profession. “The perfect our bodies of labor are when folks drill into probably the most private, probably the most if-you-know-you-know type of stuff,” Antonoff says. “I believe the depth of [Tortured Poets Department] was shocking to folks as a result of I believe individuals are consistently stunned when artists proceed to be artists. You see so many individuals take the fallacious flip and pander and turn into fearful of what they may lose. That’s the recipe for all of the worst music, and I can solely relate to individuals who don’t give a f–ok. That subsequent physique of labor — it doesn’t matter how large your viewers is, it both comes from the depths of you or it doesn’t. And I like that album a lot as a result of the entire thing is so remarkably weak.”
That ethos helps clarify why, within the midst of a record-setting run as a pop studio whiz, Antonoff retains pushing his creativity into unfamiliar areas. After producing the April soundtrack to the Apple TV+ vogue drama The New Look, which included Antonoff buddies like Lana Del Rey and The 1975 overlaying early-Twentieth-century songs, he additionally signed on to offer unique music for a Broadway revival of Romeo + Juliet, which started previews in late September. Extra lately, he unveiled early plans for his Public Studios initiative, which, with the assistance of The Ally Coalition, will construct studios in LGBTQ+ youth shelters and create a community of engineers to assist prepare these excited about manufacturing — freed from cost.
Jack Antonoff photographed September 10, 2024 at Electrical Girl Studios in New York.
Amy Lombard
Antonoff additionally deconstructed the primary Bleachers album, 2014’s Unusual Want, for a Tenth-anniversary rework dubbed A Stranger Desired, launched in September. And amid all the tasks, he foremost describes 2024 as “a touring yr,” having led Bleachers on a worldwide trek that can culminate with a headlining gig at Madison Sq. Backyard in New York on Oct. 4.
He admits that he will get requested about his schedule by the folks round him — mates interested in his balancing act and why he hasn’t zeroed in on the extra profitable items of his artistry. “My starvation to make issues hasn’t modified since I used to be like 14,” Antonoff says with a chuckle, “however the context for folks has modified.” When requested in regards to the thought of profitable 4 consecutive Grammys for producer of the yr, Antonoff returns to the thought of artist improvement — that even when he’s receiving what he describes as “an enormous honor,” his precedence stays “defending that zone” that permits him to develop as an artist and individual.
“I actually don’t let something get in the way in which of that,” Antonoff says. “I hold my head down and I am going again to work.”
This story seems within the Oct. 5, 2024, difficulty of Billboard.
