Jack Antonoff
It's a really natural thing: The people closest in your life are the people you want the first opinions from. At the end of the day, if you're not trying to impress those people first, then I think there's something wrong there.
Singles, whatever. But selling a million albums feels like an impossible thing to do.
You get to a point where everything is so important. One day you have 'Letterman,' and the next day you're at the MTV Movie Awards, and the next day you have a sold-out show for over 15,000 people. You can't cancel anything, because it's just too much to let everyone down, which is an interesting thing about being in a bigger band.
I feel like I missed a whole period of my childhood because I had a bunch of stressful things happen to me when I was like 17, 18, when people usually feel the most free in life, like going to college and like anything is possible.
I need a hobby, and I don't want it to be basketball. I want it to be music. So to get away from music, I do other music.
I went to high school in New York City. So, I grew up in New Jersey my whole life, and I was watching all the people and all the kids that I met there become so jaded.
Headlining can be sort of solitary - you're sort of on your own out there, and you start to feel for a change.
I've been touring through Texas since I was 15, on my first tour ever.
I want to come and play in cities and states where transgender citizens are not discriminated against, where there's no hateful bathroom bills at the shows where I'm going to be playing.
Human rights, no matter whom they affect, are something that should matter to all of us. It's always been a part of my life.
I just don't think it's good to be around too much creative energy other than your own.
At least for me, any time I've been in hotbeds of creativity, I got excited about something that wasn't coming from me.
I'm not trying to write a perfect record. I'm just trying to nail a moment in time.
I don't like having to be pushed into a box.
It's really easy to end up on the 'Daily Mail' if you put yourself in situations where you'll end up on the 'Daily Mail,' and it's really easy to not if you don't do that.
I feel very, very, very intent on only releasing things that I believe are fully worthy.
I'm gonna make my records, whether I release them as Bleachers or something else.
Everybody has this sack they're carrying. Some are heavier. Some are lighter. But no one doesn't have it. And if you think someone doesn't have it, they have a bigger one than you imagine.
I always had the feeling that Bleachers is my soul.
When I work with other people, I don't have to do that - it's because I love to do it and I want to do it.
I love to stay at home and write.
I have all of these lives that I want the music to live, but at the end of the day, it's out there.
I don't really look back or forward too much. That's not to say I live in the moment, because I struggle with that as well.
With art and the work you do, it has to be constantly dictated by what you're feeling and where you want to go with it.
Stepping away from Fun. was both exciting and terrifying.
All I have to do to continue to make things work is make great records, and that's more important than having a crazy master plan.
The easiest way I can describe what makes a pop song a pop song is that it's a song you want to hear over and over.
For me, a perfect pop song is something like 'This Year,' by the Mountain Goats.
What song have you played 10,000 times? It's probably not something basic. It's probably a song that validates your experience on Earth.
Once you understand that listeners want to be challenged, then you also understand that you can't take shortcuts.
I hear my songs being sung by females before I change them and make them into my voice.
Tinashe doing 'I Wanna Get Better' - it's a really personal song, and it was hard for me to imagine anyone else doing it, but stylistically her and I are so incredibly different that I was fascinated to hear what she'd do with it, and I completely loved it. It just felt like the different expression of a song that, to me, was so stamped in one way.
What could be better than working with people you love?
I remember immediately - immediately - feeling like, 'I don't want to play 'We Are Young' when I'm 35. I don't want to be defined by this.'
I'm a part of your life. You might not know it, but I am.
I love connected culture.
Everyone has something that they carry always, even if it's just as simple as, 'I hate myself.' Everyone's got a different thing.
When you constantly revisit things, it's hard to know if you're freezing in time or if you're a brilliant adult who's working through it. I think about that in therapy, talking about the same things over and over again.
I love working with women.
The first band I was ever in, I played guitar. We did Gary Glitter and Green Day covers at the time. We were called Fizz. I have no idea why we picked that. We were, like, 12 years old.
For 10 years, I had a band called Steel Train. We made three albums. We toured like crazy.
One thing a lot of people don't know about Fun. was that the three of us all came from 10 years of touring with our own projects. That's how we met, actually.
All of the guys I know from Jersey held onto this feeling of, 'We're always just working.'
I have no problem being mainstream. I grew up in the '90s when the mainstream was amazing.
The music business is filled with some nice people but a lot of strange people, so when you come across someone who's really genuine at an environment as bizarre as an awards show, you typically gravitate to them.
When artists get very big, they kind of forget that that's why they got big.
I've never really identified with the way a typical alpha male views women. It's always an awkward forum for me to hang out with another guy and talk about girls, because I can't really find a way to fit in.
I think what probably happens when you put two awkward/clunky people together is that their awkward/clunky world seems like a normal world.
I love ABC Family!