Earlier this year, Jack Antonoff described making music as an “ancient ritual.” In a viral Instagram post, he argued that using AI to “optimise” the process of making music misunderstands the very reason we create. “We have never been looking for this work to become quicker or easier, we were never frustrated by the randomness and magic it takes,” he wrote. “We do it for that exact reason.” Antonoff describes his process as emerging from the subconscious. He says that creation requires one to enter a state akin to dreaming; that once we have fallen down the rabbit hole, we must be committed to exploring what we find there. His oneiric wanderings have certainly been rich in their offerings. The thirteen-time Grammy winner has helped shape the sonic landscape of our time, writing and producing for the likes of Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Lana Del Rey, and Sabrina Carpenter, and fronting his own band, Bleachers—who are currently on a world tour celebrating their new album, everyone for ten minutes. We sat down with him between shows to talk about art as creation and conversation in an era increasingly dominated by AI slop.
hube: Loneliness, or perhaps existential loneliness, is a prominent theme in contemporary literature and visual art. Do you feel this is something music is trying to understand as well? What questions or ideas feel most urgent to you as an artist today?
Jack Antonoff: For me, it’s always been a huge question in music, and I imagine it is for everyone. Music is funny, because you experience it alone and you experience it with other people. Songs can have a great loneliness and a great community in them at the same time, and I’ve always been interested in the farthest sides of that spectrum. I don’t know if other people feel it that way, but that’s how I hear music—it’s inherently a cure for the lonely.
So I’d agree that’s what we’re all trying to work out. It’s the biggest question I find myself asking. At any given time period in music that I’ve been around, and in music from the past, all of it seems to be questions about how to get by in the time you’re in.
