Bleachers' Jack Antonoff on working with Taylor Swift: 'Her writing brilliance freaks people out'
“I think when something is so brilliant, it freaks people out,” says 39-year-old Jack Antonoff, pondering what exactly makes his collaborator Taylor Swift’s songwriting so unique – and why some people are so eager to be sceptical of it.
“I've seen this in lots of different areas where people are really, really hoping to prove something wrong, or prove something [is] hypocritical. It's definitely the worst of us.”
Though Antonoff claims he isn’t bothered by other peoples’ opinions, he is more frustrated when he hears “remarkable factual inaccuracies about how the records I make are being made.”
He gladly went to bat for Swift against Damon Albarn, for instance, after the Blur frontman falsely claimed that she “doesn’t write her own songs”.
And in fairness, Antonoff – who’s speaking to me from a mystery music studio – knows a great deal about what’s going on behind the scenes in pop right now; as well as making music as his solo project Bleachers,
