By Jesse Raub
Jack Antonoff has, for better or worse, the McCartney disease. Like Paul McCartney, Antonoff is preternaturally talented at finding a melodic hook and dragging along a song brick by brick until there’s enough foundation underneath the initial whim. But also like Paul McCartney, the sheer volume of output and general lack of depth make you wonder what sort of compulsion drives Jack Antonoff to keep making music. After the Beatles broke up, McCartney had a brief respite of introspection with Ram. Then, as we all know, he spent a decade with Wings. Antonoff similarly helped break modern radio with his band fun.’s “We Are Young” in 2011; afterward, he formed the band Bleachers, which, ah, well.
Antonoff’s music with Bleachers feels furiously calculated to amass credibility. And yet every instrument on every track sounds so sanitized beyond belief that you can hardly tell the music was made by humans. That hasn’t helped Bleachers break into critical success; however, that same instinct has made Antonoff the music industry’s latest and greatest hired gun. And after over a decade helping Taylor Swift shape her Nashville-slick pop country into regular-degular pop music, Antonoff has reared his head recently as a producer and songwriter on Phoebe Bridgers’ latest record, Lost Weekend.
Lost Weekend, despite it’s near endless credit list of collaborators, sounds exactly like a Phoebe Bridgers record. Her songwriting, ever since 2017’s debut Find a Stranger in the Alps, rests comfortably on a bedrock of folk music—verse, chorus, verse, a few chords, softness, and melody. There’s a bit more happening on this one in terms of how the chords are played and through what instruments they’re channeled, but if you like Bridgers' music, you’ll like Lost Weekend. She sings simple lines with clarity and focus, and the confessional literalism of her lyrics is endearing: if she had a bad day, Bridgers will tell you why, specifically. Relatability, it would seem, has been a big driver of success. Whomst among us hasn’t had a bad day and needed to tell someone about the exact reason?
As Bridgers’ fame has grown, however, her knack for cutting to the quick has remained the same. Lost Weekend is full of songs that peel back the thin veneer of social situations and lay them bare in uncomfortable truths. Photos of her with pop icons at a celebrity wedding have not eroded her wry sense of humor, on display in a recent Instagram post of her in a hospital after her appendix burst, cradling the award signifying her album went to number one in the UK. Despite Antonoff’s fingers all over Lost Weekend, Bridgers has seemingly channeled his manic talents into the music she wants to make.
Also at studio engineer Laura Sisk’s wedding was Antonoff’s other main collaborator, Taylor Swift. Antonoff first worked with Swift on 2014’s 1989, the album that helped her fully break free from her Nashville machine roots and set her sights on mainstream pop appeal. He's been a frequent collaborator on most albums since. When Swift needs a pop hit, she calls Max Martin—the guy who put Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, and N*Sync on the map. When she wants something with guitars, she starts emailing with Antonoff.
Swift’s career has clearly been boosted by collaboration. Working with professional hook writers expanded her sonic landscape away from pop country to genre-hopping radio hits and stripped-down, folksy stuff as well. Much of her early career was defined by declarations of Swift as the sole songwriter—a Pennsylvania-born ingenue who bootstrapped her way through Nashville with an acoustic guitar as a teenager. However, Swift’s later career, with a list of producer and co-writer credits that reads like a CVS receipt, is more “her” than her earliest stuff ever could have been. The Nashville system has a way of shaping things exactly the way they want to: do this, then that, and you’ll have a hit. With Swift’s untouchable commercial and critical ascendancy, her ability to tap the right collaborator at the right moment has given her new ways to express herself than the old sole songwriter system ever could. And yet there remains a question as to what a Taylor Swift song is.
Is it a splashy dance hit? A power-pop banger? A Laurel Canyon tribute? Regardless of what she’s aiming for, her collaborators play a strong hand in shaping what her fans hear. That is to say, if a portion of Swift’s Lover sounds suspiciously like it could be reformatted into a Bleachers song, well, what are you going to do? Actually listen to a Bleachers album? The charts would suggest that’s unlikely. One could assume that Swift’s introduction to co-writers later in her career set the table for a wider swath of music exploration as a version of self-discovery. It also might make other voices in the room shine through louder at times. For some people, these Swift collaborations are the bees knees. For others, they feel flat and calculated.
Bridgers, however, has embraced collaborators since the beginning of her career. Notably, her collaboration with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus as Boygenius took all three artists to essentially arena status while her work with Conor Oberst as Better Oblivion Community Center helped round out the rockier side of her folk rock signature sound. It should be noted that both albums sound unmistakably like Phoebe Bridgers albums. Her first two albums also feature a variety of co-writers and producers who also crop up on Lost Weekend. Antonoff makes his debut appearance on her latest, but instead of appearing as a co-writer, his credits are instead littered all over the producer and musician sections. As such, we get layered depth on the lead single “Lost Boys” that opens up the landscape of what a Phoebe Bridgers song is.
That’s an important distinction. Imagine walking into a room with Paul McCartney and not leaving with “Jet II” or “Another Band On the Run.” As much as a critically acclaimed third album is an accomplishment, keeping Jack Antonoff away from the core of your sound feels like an even bigger one.
If this all sounds overly critical of Antonoff, well, so be it. Many readers might also scoff at the digs aimed at McCartney, and to that, there’s always the suggestion to read the lyrics to “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and wonder if he and Linda couldn’t have spent maybe 45 more minutes sorting out some meaning to their sonic opus. But credit where credit is due: Jack Antonoff has an inherent level of musical talent that is undeniable.
It’s hard to imagine Taylor Swift finding the ability to express herself through a toned-down synth pop mode without someone who can hear what she was asking for and deliver it on the spot. And when Phoebe Bridgers wanted to layer more synths and effects into her songs, it’s hard to imagine someone better suited to say “I got it” than Jack Antonoff. To a degree, it makes a lot of sense: Antonoff has never found much success as a solo artist, and his work with Bleachers feels like a lamprey spinning out into the ocean depths, trying and failing to attach itself to something. Never is that more apparent than on the song “Modern Girl,” where Antonoff and crew are trying as hard as they can to channel a literal Bruce Springsteen song while the glossiest, toothless, and most efficiently smooth music seeps out around them.
Bridgers experience in working with others has helped her understand exactly how to deploy every tool in her toolbox. As such, she's managed to deliver something that sounds more like Phoebe Bridgers than ever. As a collaborator on Lost Weekend, Antonoff’s raw skill is channeled into something meaningful. It’s hard to imagine how Phoebe Bridgers would have crafted sections of her latest album without him, even if his name in the credits was a jump scare on first look. And if Lost Weekend is an example of how he can overcome his hunter instincts, then perhaps the music lovers of the world have endless bounty ahead of us as he shifts into prey mode. And without a doubt, Phoebe Bridgers is an apex predator.
Jesse Raub is a freelance food and culture writer and 20-year coffee industry veteran. He’s written for outlets like Serious Eats, Bon Appétit, The Atlantic, and Vulture. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and when he’s not writing, you can find him enjoying cheap wine or expensive coffee in his backyard.