"People have this idea of how records are made – I think it’s at once hilarious, but probably mostly rooted in misogyny": Jack Antonoff on the misconceptions surrounding his collaborations with female artists

Jack Antonoff is one of modern music's most sought-after collaborators, lending his seemingly limitless talents in production and songwriting to some of the 21st century's most iconic artists.

Antonoff sat down with Hayley Williams of Paramore this week as part of Rolling Stone's Musicians on Musicians series, discussing their mutual history in DIY rock scenes, the importance of subcultures and community, and the nature of collaboration.

Speaking about how he picks the right artists to work with, Antonoff emphasizes the importance of choosing collaborators that have a shared vision. "When you find those people that see the thing you see, it’s like this magic connection," he says. "When I work with other people, it’s so obvious if it works or not. The work is incredibly intense. The only way good things are made is by a tiny group of people seeing the same thing together."

Though he's a prolific collaborator and an in-demand producer, Antonoff is also a successful solo artist, recording Springsteen-esque synth-pop under the alias Bleachers. Williams asks Antonoff how he differentiates between material he's writing for his solo projects and music that he contributes to other artists' work.

"Most of the time [when] I’m working with other people, I’m just coming in and working on their stuff," Antonoff responds. "I’m always working on my own stuff. Once in a while, I’ll be working on an album, and have an immediate gut reaction, which is: 'Would I be sad to lose it?' And if the answer is yes, then it’s mine. And if the answer is no, then it’s a cool thing I made that’s not attached to anything."

Williams asks if Antonoff has ever gifted an idea to a collaborator only to take it back later on to use in his own work. "Oh, yes!," he says, sadly admitting that it's "too salacious to get into."

"I also don’t really do that," Antonoff explains. "When I say 'give something to someone,' I’m talking about a chord or production idea. I’ve never written a song and been like, 'Here.' Because I wouldn’t be able to really finish the song if I wasn’t gonna sing it myself. And also, I don’t work with anyone who isn’t a songwriter."

Antonoff goes on to take aim at the widespread misunderstanding of his collaborative process, targeting those who unfairly diminish the contributions of female artists that he's worked with. "One of the funniest things about my job is this total distortion of how it works," he says.

"People have this idea of how records are made. I think it’s at once hilarious, but probably mostly rooted in misogyny, because I notice the differences of who I’m working with and how people interact with me about it.

This is a subject that Antonoff has touched on before, defending collaborators such as Taylor Swift and Lorde from misogynist critics that assume he's doing most of the the heavy lifting creatively behind the scenes. Back in 2021, Lorde told the New York Times that she feels lumped together with his other female collaborators in what she jokingly referred to as "Jack's stable".

“I haven’t made a Jack Antonoff record," Lorde said. "I’ve made a Lorde record and he’s helped me make it and very much deferred to me on production and arrangement. Jack would agree with this. To give him that amount of credit is frankly insulting."

"It’s insane, because I’ve never seen so much passion about something," Antonoff tells Rolling Stone. "I know firsthand – you weren’t there. There were three people there. I’m doing a thing with me, Laura [Sisk, Antonoff's engineer], and then usually one person or two. It’s the most tiny space.… It’s so odd to me how everyone has such a clear assumption on how it happened, and [they] weren’t there. No one was there.

"It’s been the weirdest experience of my life to go to a place every day and to do a thing almost like a meditation and to have the story of that thing be completely untold, which is how I like it. I don’t want it told. The truth is incredibly uninteresting because the magic is kind of within."

Read our 2023 interview with Jack Antonoff.