'Bleachers': Taylor Swift hitmaker Jack Antonoff back with new album

Jack Antonoff's voice radiates with calm despite a lifestyle that must be stressful. "(I'm) more hopeful than common sense would suggest," he jokes during an interview. "For whatever fucking reason."

Antonoff was commenting a few days before the March 8 release of his new album, "Bleachers", by his band of the same name.

It is the fourth album by the indie-pop performer, but it is only part of his busy schedule as co-songwriter and producer contributing to many, many other albums for some of the biggest names in pop music - Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Florence and the Machine, Clairo, Lorde and others. It has garnered him ten Grammys including just recently one as Producer of the Year.

Despite all this success, the musician remains grounded: "I'm very grateful, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I think more about what I do." And that is first and foremost music.

Not just for the really big names, but also for his own band, which - at least in commercial terms - still lags somewhat behind his other achievements. "These markers of success are completely different to the artistic success of working at it every day," he muses.

"No amount of money can make you work in the studio. You either get into something important or you don't," Antonoff asserts. "If you have the biggest budget in the world and you go to the biggest studio in the world, it doesn't mean you get the best song, right?"

"Shouting out what it feels to be me"

Songs like "Modern Girl" and "Tiny Moves" on the new album are rousing and extremely danceable. Most of the songs are about his wife, the actress Margaret Qualley whom he recently married. She also appears in the music videos.

He describes her influence on the record as "endless" and is looking forward to hearing the songs again himself in a few years' time as a snapshot. "On the album, I'm really just shouting out how it feels to be me right now."

The track "Isimo" is also about Qualley. Songs like this lend "Bleachers" the necessary depth that goes beyond romanticised melancholy. "This is my favourite lyric from a lyrical point of view," says Antonoff.

It's about emotional baggage and how both partners can carry it together. However, it is not about relationship problems, but about his own, such as the loss of his younger sister Sarah, who died of a brain tumour when he was 18.

That's why songs like "Woke Up Today" - as on previous Bleachers albums - are about the pain of this loss, which Antonoff has felt ever since.

Antonoff's only advice: Keep your vision pure

But he also addresses the charged global political situation and the accompanying world-weariness in "Hey Joe" or "Self Respect", with Antonoff saying "I think the only thing that makes people feel really horrible is when they deny their feelings."

Above all, it's about accepting how you feel - that's also the secret to a good song, he says. "The only advice I have is to just keep your vision really pure, because it's kind of all you have." The most important thing as a songwriter and artist is to release things into the world that you really love and that you think the world needs.

A typical element in Antonoff's songwriting is his readiness for a playfulness that gives the songs a lightness, something you can hear on the Bleachers collaboration with Lana Del Rey, "Alma Mater".

This gives the album the necessary variety and edge after the first quarter.

If nothing else, Antonoff is proof that you don't need TikTok optimisation with hollow phrases and shortened hooks to make yourself heard.

The songwriter shows how to live and enjoy his life for his sister, who can no longer do so. And to live with the emotional openness that he has learned anew through his wife. But Antonoff is also grateful for the many friends and artists in his life and who worked on the album: Matty Healy from The 1975 plays piano, while St Vincent, Florence Welch, Clairo and Lana Del Rey contribute vocals.

Antonoff brings all of this together on the current album. "If you're lucky enough to find your people, you just go with it. Maybe that's why I'm so optimistic."