Jack Antonoff, Hayley Williams on Band Life for Musicians on Musicians

O
ne day in 2013, Jack Antonoff was sitting in a car in Los Angeles with his friend Hayley Williams when he decided to play her a new song. Back then, Antonoff was best known as a member of the band Fun., and he hoped to release the track, “I Wanna Get Better,” as the first single for a new solo project, Bleachers. The song — a “fucking life story in three minutes,” as Antonoff has called it — defiantly addressed a series of personal traumas that shaped his identity. Getting Williams’ seal of approval was a big deal.

“It was one of the first songs that I really loved that spoke to mental health in the way that it did,” Williams recalls. “I needed to say [what the song said], but someone else had to say it for me, in a way.” As she relates the memory, she and Antonoff are sitting across from each other in a studio in Queens one July afternoon, just days after she joined Bleachers onstage at the Newport Folk Festival.

The pair have been in each other’s lives for two decades. Antonoff saw Williams’ band, Paramore, play its first festival show, at New Jersey’s Bamboozle (formerly Skate and Surf) in 2005. Williams was a fan of Antonoff’s band Steel Train; she even wore one of their buttons in a photo shoot back in the day (“My biggest button,” she notes). After the first Fun. album came out indepen­dently in 2009, she sent it to Fueled by Ramen co-founder John Janick (now running the powerhouse label Interscope Records), who later signed the band. “I didn’t know that,” Antonoff says when she mentions this. “I don’t get to be anywhere without that move.”

Fun. opened for Paramore in 2010, just as the headliner’s latest album, Brand New Eyes, created a massive pop-crossover moment. During that tour, Williams would spend time with Antonoff at the catering table, avoiding the drama brewing behind the scenes within her own group. “Our band was super fun to hang out with then,” she says sarcastically.

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“You were fun to hang out with,” he says. “We just thought you were super friendly.”

In each other they saw an immediate kinship: Both had cut their teeth in DIY rock scenes, learning how to play, write, and build community in Franklin, Tennessee (for Williams), and New Jersey’s Bergen County (Antonoff). Both have come a long way since: Paramore became one of this century’s biggest bands, and Williams’ powerhouse stage presence and voice have inspired everyone from Billie Eilish to Lil Uzi Vert. With Paramore on a break, Williams, 36, self-released an excellent raw solo album this summer, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, which arrives as a physical release on Nov. 7 with two additional songs, for a 20-track album.

Antonoff, 41, has become one of the most prominent hitmakers on the charts, working on everything from Taylor Swift smashes to Kendrick Lamar’s GNX; this year alone, he was instrumental in Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend and Doja Cat’s Vie. With Bleachers, he’s collaborated with heroes like Bruce Springsteen while turning his band into a live juggernaut. Coming off the success of last year’s fantastic self-titled Bleachers LP, Antonoff has never felt more sure about who he is. (In addition to this story, you can also catch Antonoff and Williams at Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians: Live event at the Beacon Theater on Oct. 23.)

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Watch the video interview below

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Williams: When you were playing “I Wanna Get Better” at Newport, I felt so emotional about it. It’s such an introspective song, but it’s so triumphant-sounding. I got really emotional thinking about where you were at in your life and your career when you [first] showed me that, versus what I’ve watched you do [since].

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We’ve been able to grow through so many seasons of our careers. I feel like I’ve gotten to watch and have you support me in these ways. Even though “I Wanna Get Better” wasn’t the first Jack song I ever heard, it’s the one [where], to me, you really put a stake in the ground.

Antonoff: It’s the first song I wrote where I was like, “Man, you can all fuck off.” What’s the first song you wrote where you were like, “This is it”? Like, “If you crack me open, this is the music that would shoot out”?

Williams: I had a lot of those moments when I was writing [Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party]. And some of that is because I would write the lyrics and feel really uncomfortable about it, but then the processing all happened a lot quicker for me this time around. I would look back at three weeks ago and be like, “Oh, my God, that’s what that meant.” … I had that with “Whim.” That song explains so much about how I view relation­ships, and I think my downfall in them and the tendency to sabotage. I saw the lyrics printed on something recently, and I was like, “Those could go on my epitaph, and I’d be OK with it.”

Antonoff:This whole new album feels like being in a room with you more than anything else you’ve ever made.

Williams: That’s the coolest compliment.

Antonoff: It feels very conversational. That’s the hardest thing to do. I think it’s very easy to be unclear. There’s so much armor in being unclear.

Williams: I think that’s why, in my mind, I wish I was more poetic in this or that way. Because the thought is I will feel like I’m cloaked in something but maybe still get to be cool-artist vibe. But I think it’s just not natural.

Antonoff: The whole album, there’s so many moments where I’m like, “Whoa, she said that.” It’s what it’s like to actually talk to someone, which, I think, is something we’re all reclaiming.

Williams: We’re saying nothing if we’re not cringing a little bit, saying the uncomfortable thing.…

Antonoff: The album gave me this feeling which I’ve been having about music. In this hellscape of only marketing, marketing, marketing, it’s become very clear what matters and what doesn’t. [The album] made me feel happy.

Williams: That’s so sick. Thank you. We got to experience this coming from the scenes that we came from, and the kind of music that really kick-started us. It’s so communal, and you’re always being fed by and feeding back into the community. When the world feels the way it does, I find myself wanting to plug back into what’s local. I’m wanting to go to smaller shows. I’m wanting to feel like I can see the blood and the bone.

Antonoff: Yeah, this is our version of every motherfucker on Earth making sourdough and trying to find a yard to plant stuff in.

Williams: The modern world drives you back underground in a weird way.

Antonoff: When I was younger, we were like, “TV rots your fucking brain.” Now it’s quaint. If someone was like, “You wanna watch a movie together?” I’d cry. Watching a movie with someone at their house would be equivalent to the Sixties version of lying in a field …

Williams: … like, line dancing. Especially sans any other screens.

Antonoff: Dude, I’m only happy if I have something on TV, something on my laptop, [and] I have my phone. My partner [Margaret Qualley] meditates and stuff. She’s not sick that way.

Williams: I hate to say I’m with you. I really romanticize the version of myself that is not like that.

Antonoff: When you’re [onstage], you’re fulfilled.

Williams: I am fulfilled. But I think that my extracurricular activities … I’m starting to see the rotting effects. This is where I have to decide that if I want to be a musician for the rest of my life, I have to be like I was at 16 and just practice more and hang out in my room with my instruments more and not rot away.

Antonoff: It’s really fun to rot.

Williams: But I’m tired of the news. There’s days you’re just like, “I have to get away.”

Antonoff: That’s why I go to the studio so much, because it really — I’m not thinking about anything else.

Williams: You’re locked in.

Antonoff: Where do you lock in?

Williams: I lock in when I’m writing. It’s nice because we’ll start a lot of times by digging through my notes and seeing what unhinged shit I wrote down when I wasn’t thinking about it. I really enjoy it as a writing prompt, almost.… When there’s a thread that you start to pull and there’s something there, there’s a purity that I’m always chasing. I haven’t really found it in any other hobby or passion. Do you ever feel ashamed of that?

“Good things are made by a tiny group of people seeing the same thing together.”

JACK ANTONOFF

Antonoff: I used to feel more. But it’s been my whole life.… It’s just what I do, it’s what I think about doing, what I look forward to doing, and it’s what I spend my time trying to preserve [so] that I can keep doing it. Which, on one hand, it’s the most glorious thing. It’s also kind of pathetic to not have a well-rounded life.

Williams: I feel that way too. Zac [Farro, Paramore’s drummer] is so good at tennis. It’s a secondary passion he thrives in the way he thrives in music. I admire it so much. There’s nothing [else] that gives me that feeling.

Antonoff: I think it’s OK. Sometimes it’s about breaking it down in the simplest sense, which is: That’s just what you do. And if you spend your life doing that, that would be a life worth having been lived. It gets bad if you start to distort. If you’re spending a certain amount of time in the studio or on the road and that causes you to take too many drugs or isolate or hurt your brain or body … But you’re one of the more functional people I know.

Williams: Huge compliment. I don’t feel that, but …

Antonoff: I think feeling it is the first step to being an actual fucking insane person. “I am functioning” is, like, one minute before you walk into the water [laughs]. Also, I think this comes from the scenes we were raised in, but not everyone plays like it’s their last fucking night on Earth. But I see that [in you], and it reminds me of being a kid at the Wayne Firehouse [a DIY venue in New Jersey]. And it’s like, “This is the last show on Earth.”

Williams: Every show really does feel like [it could be] the last one.

Antonoff: Me too, which is really hard on my body.… I’ve talked to Springsteen about this because he plays it like fucking last night on Earth every night. And he can still do it.

Williams: He’s ripped.

Antonoff: I’m not gonna age like that. You will.

Williams: No, no, no. I’m a twig. I’m gonna just disintegrate into thin air.

Antonoff: Not how I see it. But we were talking about deep jealousy of people whose job it is to hunch over the piano and make everyone weep. It was interesting to hear [Springsteen] say, “Yeah, it’s not fucking easy,” because I look at him like a brick wall. But it’s so painful to play like that. It always has been! It’s not an age thing.

Williams: It’s traumatizing, unless you’re used to it. The biggest and hardest lesson has been when I have to recover my voice. The body stuff is one thing, but as long as I’m moving and sleeping, I’ll be OK. My voice though, oh, my God.

This just sends me into an entirely different direction, and I want to know: Do you feel disconnected from your body a lot as an artist?

Antonoff: I have no connection with my body, besides a really strange relationship to food, which I also think is birthed from touring. Zero connection to my body. And I get hurt a lot when I play.

“I want to be in 100 bands before I die. I like that feeling of being in a room with people.”

HAYLEY WILLIAMS

Williams: You live up here [points to her head]. Everything’s kind of going on up here, whether it’s creativity, worry, all of it?

Antonoff: A lot of gut. I live heavily here [points to his stomach]. I feel kind of like a question mark in my gut.… Do you have that?

Williams: I do think that I have a neurotic connection to my body where I will start to stress about something and it will instantly show up in my throat or in my stomach. It’s like when good things are happening—

Antonoff: Other shoe dropping.

Williams: The piano falling from the sky.

Antonoff: And not a Jew, which is interesting because that’s a big thing in my culture.

Williams: For me, my connection to it is sort of skewed. I have food stuff too. I’m always interested in this with artists because we actually have access to such a great release for our energy. That could be through writing lyrics. It could be through moving the way we move onstage.… I think that’s energy moving through us.

Antonoff: That’s a way bigger [release] than I’ve ever gotten from trying yoga or things like that. But then I get in trouble, because after I play, I feel like I’ve conquered the world, and I eat everything, and then I get really sick.

Williams: I want artists to talk about that stuff more. My mom teaches about this kind of stuff at Belmont [University] in Nashville, and it’s a lot about emotional intelligence and awareness in other ways. I’m always really interested when she talks about the body. Anything in my life that happens, it’ll show up as acne, as nausea, it’ll show up as [pain in] my shoulder. I think those are just messages, right?

Antonoff: We grew up in a very similar way. Do you ever feel like your origin story gets rewritten [by others]?

Williams: Yeah … I don’t think anyone has ever gotten the story
of our band right. At this point, it’s just fun.

Antonoff: Same with me. I feel like we can relate to this because you make a few pop records and all of a sudden it’s like, “No, you didn’t grow up in that place. You didn’t grow up playing [American] Legion halls.” I just did! I’ve been honestly writing about it for the first time.

Williams: It’s far more interesting than being in the pop world.

Antonoff: It was the most interesting thing in the world.

Williams: I still die on the sword of the way we grew up, the scenes we grew up in. Even if I kind of hate so much about it.

Antonoff: There’s so much I hated about it. I was talking with someone in their early twenties and I was like, “There was so much messed-up stuff when I grew up, but I also had so much to push against.” You didn’t go to a show without a can of food. Everything was Food Not Bombs. It was so early [to be introduced] to the concept of activism and music and all this stuff.

I love the idea that we listen to young people more, but it also must be so hard to be an angry 15-year-old and an adult’s like, “What do we do with the Indigenous?” You’re like, “I don’t know what to do!” A lot of people I know have kids that are teenagers, and they’re demanded to have answers on things that robbed them of the opportunity of being kind of a little bitch.

“I felt like I always got blamed for the shit that would go on in our band.”

HAYLEY WILLIAMS

Williams: What an important time of life, just to get to be a little bitch. I saw the Linda Lindas [L.A. punk band that ranges in age from 15 to 21] play in Nashville … and I was like, holy shit. What would it have been like to be that age and have my parents understand everything that I’m talking about?

Antonoff: I was so angry.

Williams: Yeah, me too.

Antonoff: But also, not to knock anything they got going on, but having that subculture was my whole feeling.

Williams: It’s the whole foundation to …

Antonoff: … push against.

Williams: I watch what you do and you’re involved in so many different things. I always can feel the same heartbeat in it. I stay so proud watching you because I know a lot about where you came from and what that feels like, and I can still see it in every move that you make. I think that’s what I’m looking for all over the place in our industry. Right now, we’re in such an interesting time to me, that there are so many artists that are having a moment that have been around for so long. Charli [XCX], Turnstile. I feel like I’m getting to watch my favorite movie.

Antonoff: The stuff we always thought would live under the surface has totally broken through.

Williams: It’s influenced pop culture in such a way. When I was at the Turnstile show at Under the K Bridge [in New York], I had this moment like, “Hardcore kids are running the music industry, and I’m in love with it.”

Antonoff: The last time I saw them I was like, “This looks like a Kid Dynamite show.” The way everyone’s moving is really remarkable. The aesthetic of real artists or a real band is so back, which is sort of a funny concept, but it leaves a lot of space for people who can actually do it. I meet so many people [where] the aesthetic of a band is interesting to them, but a band is a very long thing.

Williams: We could talk about that forever. I’m on the opposite end, feeling out what it means to be someone that only ever wanted to be part of that, not for the aesthetic, but because of the safety of it.

Antonoff: The safety is the best. You move as a unit. You’re like a gang.

Williams: I don’t know how to live any other way.

Antonoff: But you kind of are a band even when you’re solo. The feeling is very communal.

Williams: There’s no point to me otherwise. I made this record, and it kind of feels like it just exploded out. It does feel right to put it out under my name. But I think I have to exercise saying that I feel like it’s the last record I’ll do under my name, and I feel proud of that. I want to be in 100 bands before I die. I like that feeling of being in a room with people and something that didn’t exist becomes a thing that you’re all holding.

Antonoff: Yeah, the one plus one equals a million [thing]. Why I like producing records is the idea that two things come together and then something new happens. I don’t understand why anyone argues in the studio. Just leave. I think of it like flying a plane. We can’t be arguing.

Williams: I agree. You know our band [Paramore], and you grew up around us. We’ve had more than our fair share of drama. Our manager would always be like, “Communication is the most important stuff in any rela­tionship.” He’s been saying that to us since we were 16. When you think you’ve figured that out, a few years go by and you have to refigure that out.…

This is insane to bring up in an interview of this magnitude. But I genuinely felt like I always got blamed for all the shit that would go on in our band, and I never knew if it was [because] I’m the singer. But also at the time, I’m a young girl, and people don’t understand young girls.

“Live music is bigger than ever. People are fucking going to shows.”

JACK ANTONOFF

Antonoff: And the only girl the whole time, right? You never had another woman in the band, right?

Williams: Maybe randomly for live stuff, but no, never in the band. At times, I wore that like a badge of honor. “I can handle this, and I want to protect the whole.” But my attitude, whether it’s in the studio [or] the live setting, is I know what I like, and I want to contribute that to it. But I also just love when the vibe is good and everyone’s happy.

Antonoff: It makes so much better work.…

Williams: I do have a question about working alone, or how you know when something is for you versus how you delegate it to a collab­orative setting. I’m still kind of figuring that out because, like I said, I would much rather be with other people.

Antonoff: Most of the time [when] I’m working with other people, I’m just coming in and working on their stuff. 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: You ever give something to someone and then take it back?

Antonoff: No … Oh, yes! Too salacious to get into.

Williams: OK, wow …

Antonoff: But I also don’t really do that. 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.

One of the funniest things about my job is this total distortion of how it works. 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.

Williams: Oh, yeah.

Antonoff: It’s insane, because I’ve never seen so much passion about something. I know firsthand — you weren’t there. There were three people there. I’m doing a thing with me, Laura [Sisk, his 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. When I eat something amazing, I’m not like, “Here’s what they did.”

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.

Williams: I feel that way too. I try to film as much as I can. I like to open my computer and have Photo Booth running when I’m writing something, especially if I’m making something with a friend. But I’m still really new to it. You just launched yourself into collab­orations with a lot of different people, and it always felt really true to you. Whereas I would say no to every opportunity to co-write for the longest time. I just didn’t want to leave the bubble that we had created with Paramore.

At the same time, now I’m 36 — 20 years or so into my career — and I’m realizing I don’t actually have much experience collaborating outside of this world. There’s a hungry part of me that I’m definitely willing to feed and try, but it comes with so much self-doubt. Do you still get terrified?

Antonoff: If it’s my music, it’s terrifying. But then when you find those people that see the thing you see, it’s like this magic connection. When I work with other people, it’s so obvious if it works or not. The work is incredibly intense.

Williams: Every relationship in my life is a slow burn. I made this album with [producer] Daniel [James].… When I finally decided to try this, it was such an instant [feeling of] “This is safe.” And also, “We’re the same. We’re the same kind.”

Antonoff: The only way good things are made is by a tiny group of people seeing the same thing together.

Williams: I’m feeling that so much around working on this project because it came from me not really being in a great place.… A few friends became a better label experience than I’ve ever had. And this is the first time I’m not on a label.

Antonoff: I let almost no one in, because it’s such a vulnerable state. Doesn’t matter who or what you’ve done in the past. All irrelevant. Every songwriter thinks they’ve written their last song. You never think you can do it again.

Williams: I wish it would change.

Antonoff: The room is so vulnerable, I feel like you can’t let anyone in, because if someone comes in and is like, “Ooh, those drums,” you just, like, die.

Williams: I’ve loved tapping into the creativity of friends that I trust. If they said, “I don’t know, have you thought about it this way?” it wouldn’t suck the oxygen out. It would just refine something. That’s also the importance of community. It’s like the vulnerability part we talked about. The trust … Another thing that’s really fun about being a part of a subculture is it kind of does narrow down — depending on the show I’m at, I’m like, “OK, we have similar values.” I feel so, like, held in, you know, tight by that.

“There’s a lot of dudes that are gonna say weird shit to me. But I get to be here.”

HAYLEY WILLIAMS

Antonoff: Same.

Williams: I kind of just don’t want anything else.

Antonoff: I don’t want anything else. I just want to make sure everyone gets in [to the show] safely and doesn’t get, like, completely destroyed by how much it costs.

Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are you gonna talk about that? How are you gonna tour?

Antonoff: The biggest thing I’m gonna keep doing is shouting about it, because live music is literally bigger than ever. That’s a beautiful thing. People are fucking going to shows in a big way now.

Williams: I don’t know if I just tuned back in or if it really is happening in a way again that feels more akin to what we grew up with.

Antonoff: For better or worse, I’m kind of always watching that part of it. I love touring and live music so much. If people aren’t coming to your show, you ain’t worth shit.… My Chem[ical Romance] are having the biggest tour ever right now.

Williams: It’s really cool. They’re really good guys.

Antonoff: I grew up with them. The best guys. So this thing is flour­ishing. Everyone wants to go see music, and there’s so much for everyone to go around. Then there’s a couple fucking people at top [who] just have to be like, “Nope.” And you fucking are left with what you’re left with, which is people like us talking to the audience being like, “Hey, we’re so sorry about the fake VIP line. Thanks for letting us know. Gonna shut it down.”

Williams: I lost a large chunk of my innocence the first time I realized that we had made enough money to get gas to go to the next show, but we had to give half of it to the venue. My dad was like, “This is America.”

Antonoff: I remember it too. I’ve seen it from every level. I know how hard it is to be someone who plays for no one. That’s character building. What fucks me off is, why is drawing a few hundred people not an honest living? You and your band can’t turn a profit, and then we have to watch the companies that own all these rooms and monopolize the whole fucking thing and post billions of earnings. Chill the fuck out, it’s working. Everyone wants to come. It’s not total anarchy.

Williams: The indie venues [struggling] thing is killing me. My favorite street in Nashville has been just obliterated.

Antonoff: It’s so simple to me, and there’s one answer that’s never going to happen, which is [the corporations] have to make a little less money. I want everyone in that room [at a show] to feel like a fucking human being from beginning to end. I want it to be the best night ever. The last thing I want people to think about is how they’re treated. I remember growing up — a bad security guard? They’d be gone. It would never happen. There was such protection over the literal vibe.

Williams: I remember getting heckled quite a bit. There was this one show at the North Star Bar [in Philadelphia]. I had a great show, but there was this guy that just kept saying really foul shit to me. I’m 16 … Someone heard this guy and just immediately took him outside. I heckled him back and shit, but I can only do so much. I’m trying to play a show.

That night really impacted me, because [it showed] we take care of each other. There’s a lot of bad apples. There’s a lot of dudes that are going to say weird shit to me. That sucks. But I get to be here. I’m going to keep claiming the space, and the right people are going to make the space.

Antonoff: The culture of the audience is fucking everything.