Jack Antonoff stopped by The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday morning ahead of the release of the Bleachers’ fifth studio album, Everyone for Ten Minutes. During the wide-ranging interview, the producer and musician discussed his relationship with 14-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift and their collaborative partnership — the pair have worked together since before Swift’s 1989 album through The Tortured Poets Department, including her re-recorded version of Fearless.
So, when news got around that Antonoff wasn’t featured on her most recent LP, The Life of a Showgirl, rumors swirled online that they had a falling out. When Stern asked Antonoff about his absence on her 12th studio album, the producer said it didn’t bother him at all and that “I only feel grateful for the work that has happened.” He added, “Maybe it’s only because I write my own songs and sing them, but I understand that need to have different collaborators and jump around.”
Emphasizing his point, Antonoff said, “I don’t think it’s normal to have the same collaborators over and over, and when I’ve had it with people, I think it’s a weird miracle.”
Antonoff also discussed his “very deep” friendship with Swift and their songwriting process they call the “rant bridge.” “You spend a whole song — verse and chorus — you know, being super poetic and dancing around something… and then you get to this bridge, and you just crash the fuck out,” Antonoff said. “At that point you’ve earned it, so it’s almost like you can be so free. It’s something that I feel like is one of our very special things… We kind of egg each other on.”
Antonof’s interview with Stern aired on the same day Swift’s interview with The New York Times Magazine published on Tuesday. Swift also took the opportunity to address her friendship with Antonoff and said, “Jack Antonoff is a collaborator of mine and one of my best friends.” She also shared insight on their “rant bridge,” calling it a “stream of consciousness, endless pouring-out of emotion, intrusive thoughts, blended with metaphor, with discussion, with shouting.” She pointed to her 2014 song “Out of the Woods,” 2019’s “Cruel Summer,” and “Is It Over Now?” from 2023 as examples.
Elsewhere in the 30-minute interview, the songwriter shared how a car ride with fiancee Travis Kelce inspired her single “Elizabeth Taylor,” from The Life of a Showgirl. “I’m riding in the car with Travis. I go on and on and explaining to Travis, like why I love Elizabeth Taylor so much,” she recalled. “I’m like, her eyes were violet. Some people said they were blue. Some people said they were violet. I think they were violet. And we arrive, we get home, he gets out of the car, and I’m just in my head. I’m like, this intrusive melody of like, ‘I cry my eyes violet, Elizabeth Taylor,’ and I’m just like scrambling to open my record app on my phone.”
This kind of experience “where it floats down like a cloud in front of you, and all you have to do is grab it, and the song transpires from there” isn’t that rare, Swift said. “That’s the way it happens most of the time.”