For better or for worse, I just have to be on tour for some portion of the year. But it's not easy, you know. It's not easy on the people you love, and I understand when people look at this life and say this isn't sustainable.
— Jack Antonoff
That's what is incredible about human beings, is the choice to keep going.
You can look at someone and get to know their music and say, 'This is someone who I want to work with.'
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.
You can be a man who loves a woman but love someone the way a gay man loves another man or a woman loves a woman.
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.
I think men are, like, repulsive, and I prefer being in a room with women. I think they're often just more interesting.
I have no problem being mainstream. I grew up in the '90s when the mainstream was amazing.
For 10 years, I had a band called Steel Train. We made three albums. We toured like crazy.
I love working with women.
I love connected culture.
I remember immediately - immediately - feeling like, 'I don't want to play 'We Are Young' when I'm 35. I don't want to be defined by this.'
Tinashe doing 'I Wanna Get Better' - it's a really personal song, and it was hard for me to imagine anyone else doing it, but stylistically her and I are so incredibly different that I was fascinated to hear what she'd do with it, and I completely loved it. It just felt like the different expression of a song that, to me, was so stamped in one 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.
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.
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 love to stay at home and write.
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.
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!
I've noticed that a lot of people in film always seem interested in music videos, like it's some, like, really exciting thing they've always wanted to do or something.
It's pretty easy to tell who's garbage and who's not right away, and most people suck, to be honest, or they're just really wrapped up in what's going on with themselves.
I think what probably happens when you put two awkward/clunky people together is that their awkward/clunky world seems like a normal world.
I don't really love roller coasters because I feel like they're filled with germs and make me nauseous.
The music business is filled with some nice people but a lot of strange people, so when you come across someone who's really genuine at an environment as bizarre as an awards show, you typically gravitate to them.
All of the guys I know from Jersey held onto this feeling of, 'We're always just working.'
The first band I was ever in, I played guitar. We did Gary Glitter and Green Day covers at the time. We were called Fizz. I have no idea why we picked that. We were, like, 12 years old.
When you constantly revisit things, it's hard to know if you're freezing in time or if you're a brilliant adult who's working through it. I think about that in therapy, talking about the same things over and over again.
I'm a part of your life. You might not know it, but I am.
What could be better than working with people you love?
I hear my songs being sung by females before I change them and make them into my voice.
For me, a perfect pop song is something like 'This Year,' by the Mountain Goats.
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.
I don't really look back or forward too much. That's not to say I live in the moment, because I struggle with that as well.
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.
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.
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.
The exciting thing about Bleachers and fun. are they're different, and they're aesthetically different in many ways. But it's also like my role is very different, and that's cool.
I love ABC Family!
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.
When artists get very big, they kind of forget that that's why they got big.
When you go all over the world for work, your dream vacation is your bedroom.
One thing a lot of people don't know about Fun. was that the three of us all came from 10 years of touring with our own projects. That's how we met, actually.
I loved Interpol when they came out, but I never wanted to be in Interpol.
Everyone has something that they carry always, even if it's just as simple as, 'I hate myself.' Everyone's got a different thing.
The heart and soul of pop is newness, excitement, innovation.
I grew up on Raffi. That was my first impression of what a rock star was.
Once you understand that listeners want to be challenged, then you also understand that you can't take shortcuts.
The easiest way I can describe what makes a pop song a pop song is that it's a song you want to hear over and over.
Stepping away from Fun. was both exciting and terrifying.
I have all of these lives that I want the music to live, but at the end of the day, it's out there.
