Top 55 Jack Antonoff Quotes

What sets ‘Some Nights’ apart from anything we’ve ever done is the hip-hop influence. Not so much the actual sound of hip-hop, but more the vibrato and the artistry that comes with it. Right now, the artists that seem to be pushing to be the greatest artists and are trying to change the world are hip-hop artists.

I have my cousin’s jacket from when he was at war in Iraq. He never came home. It’s incredible to have something that is so personal but that I also feel relatively comfortable wearing.

I’m gonna make my records, whether I release them as Bleachers or something else.

Black and white creates a strange dreamscape that color never can.

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.

If you’re lucky enough to find anything in life that gives you five seconds, let alone an hour, of relief from life, you should try to do it forever.

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.

When you start writing songs on your own, there’s no Bible, there’s no one around you, so you’re just writing, and you’re left with, like, the dead space in your head to know if it’s a good song or an interesting concept.

Singles, whatever. But selling a million albums feels like an impossible thing to do.

I’m 30. I’m not that young, right? I’m not, like, 24 or 22. I’m no longer in the phase of my life where I talk about everything as in the future. Like, I’m in the future.

I’ve been touring through Texas since I was 15, on my first tour ever.

Everyone has something that they carry always, even if it’s just as simple as, ‘I hate myself.’ Everyone’s got a different thing.

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.

I just work a lot. I just remember recording in a hotel room in Malaysia. I work on planes, I work on buses. A lot of times when I’m backstage in the hotel or on the bus, I would have new ideas.

Of course, the majority of us would speak up in the face of outrageous bigotry, but do we speak up in a social situation when someone casually refers to something as ‘gay’? If we don’t, we are standing with the homophobes whom we are quietly fighting.

The first time I ever got paid to play was 1/18/99, Fire Hall in Bordentown, New Jersey. Played first on the bill – we got paid $20!

Sometimes it’s really quick, and sometimes it’s really long. There’s no formula for writing songs.

For me, a perfect pop song is something like ‘This Year,’ by the Mountain Goats.

Headlining can be sort of solitary – you’re sort of on your own out there, and you start to feel for a change.

The best pop music is the songs that a group of people can dance to, but you can also listen to in your bed and cry. That’s something obviously that The Beatles started and… so having that darkness there opens another door.

Once you understand that listeners want to be challenged, then you also understand that you can’t take shortcuts.

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.

People identify with other people for different reasons, and I personally am really comfortable around lesbians because, in some ways, we view women the same way.

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.

So many boys and girls talk the same way, listen to the same music, look the same. If I’m out, I’ll notice the person who looks different before I notice the person who’s, ‘really hot.’

That’s what is incredible about human beings, is the choice to keep going.

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 started buying vinyl records when I got into punk music because, in the punk scene in New Jersey, vinyl was more like a necessity than a luxury.

When artists get very big, they kind of forget that that’s why they got big.

My parents had a house on the Jersey shore – I grew up right there, going down there every summer and living there. It is home for me.

I think men are, like, repulsive, and I prefer being in a room with women. I think they’re often just more interesting.

Bleachers comes from a different place. It’s personal. It’s just me putting myself out there as myself. It’s very intense.

My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the ’90s in general – growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.

I’m a part of your life. You might not know it, but I am.

‘Glee’ is one of the very few mainstream outlets that is giving a voice to communities of people that don’t necessarily have a loud voice, specifically the gay community. It gives a really positive and forward statement.

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.

When you’re in a band, it’s like everyone’s the CEO, and anyone could destroy it at any moment.

I loved Interpol when they came out, but I never wanted to be in Interpol.

I think what probably happens when you put two awkward/clunky people together is that their awkward/clunky world seems like a normal world.

For 10 years, I had a band called Steel Train. We made three albums. We toured like crazy.

All of the guys I know from Jersey held onto this feeling of, ‘We’re always just working.’

The connection I make with being young and growing up is, like, the feeling of not being crushed by the world. Having an idea, thinking you can do it.

You have to believe that people don’t want what you think they’re going to like, you know? They want what you like. Once you start doing that, you actually start connecting with people.

I just don’t think it’s good to be around too much creative energy other than your own.

I feel very, very, very intent on only releasing things that I believe are fully worthy.

The heart and soul of pop is newness, excitement, innovation.

There was this darkness about being from New Jersey.

Great songs come out of people’s bedrooms; they come out of studios; there’s no formula for it.

I’ve ended up on some website list or some other list for super right-wing people. They’ve been tweeting some pretty rude stuff at me, so I think there’s a sect of America out there that doesn’t like certain opinions and can really take their claws out when they don’t like what you’re saying.

I love to stay at home and write.

I love connected culture.

I don’t really love roller coasters because I feel like they’re filled with germs and make me nauseous.

As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.

My grandparents got out of Poland right before the Holocaust and came here, and the only thing that mattered was surviving.