Jack Antonoff scored some major hits with the band Fun., but the overall experience was one big miss.
In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Antonoff, 40, opened up about the shifting reception to Taylor Swift‘s The Tortured Poets Department, which dropped in April and features several songs produced by Antonoff. “Story of my life, baby,” Antonoff teased.
Antonoff explained that “time is my only critic,” noting that many artists have the same perspective. “All that matters is how the stuff ages,” he said. “I’ve been a part of or personally made so much work at this point that hit a certain way when it came out, only to see what happened with it eight months later, a year later, three years later.”
The reporter went on to mention Fun. specifically as a band that was “big deal at the time” — they won Best New Artist and Song of the Year for “We Are Young” at the 2013 Grammy Awards — but is seemingly forgotten now.
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“I think you’re illustrating why I chose to not do that much longer,” Antonoff responded. “I know when something will age well, and that’s why I stay with the things that I want to do. There was something very accidental about Fun., which is also what stressed me out about it. It wasn’t my band.”
Identifying himself as a “bandleader,” Antonoff added, “I’ve always been a bandleader. I like singing my lyrics. I like telling my story. My attraction to being on the road — would ‘proselytizing’ be the right word for it? — comes from explaining a point of view that I come from and inviting people into it. So if I’m not getting that, I don’t really want to do it much.”
He continued, “There’s a lot of people in my life who, when Fun. was this massive band and I was obsessively making the first Bleachers album, they were like, ‘What are you doing? What is this? Is this ego?’ And I was like, ‘No, you have to feel yourself. And I don’t feel myself.’ It’s that simple.”
Along with Antonoff, Fun. featured musicians Nate Ruess and Andrew Dost. The group formed in 2008 and dropped their debut album, Aim and Ignite, one year later. Their breakthrough success came in 2012 with the release of Some Nights, with “We Are Young,” “Carry On” and the album’s title track all making it into the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100.
Despite their prominence at the top of the charts, Fun. announced in February 2015 that they were going on hiatus to pursue different projects. Antonoff had already released the first Bleachers album, 2014’s Strange Desire, when Fun. dissolved. Three more Bleachers records have followed, including their self-titled album, which was released in March.
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Antonoff may be better known to some, however, as a prolific producer. His friendship with Swift, 34, began in 2014, and he’s since become one of her most trusted collaborators. Antonoff has also teamed up with Lorde, Carly Rae Jepsen, The 1975 and Sabrina Carpenter, among other major artists.
While discussing Carpenter’s meteoric rise to pop stardom, Antonoff told the Los Angeles Times, “I don’t think people wanted to hear from new voices as much as some new voices came with the f—ing goods. And the thread between Charli [XCX] and Chappell [Roan] and Sabrina is that they’re artists who’ve been killing for a long, long time. I’ve been aware of Sabrina for years and years and years. Charli has been redefining and crystallizing her sound for over a decade,” he said. “I hope that on the industry side, all the notes are taken.”
