Jack Antonoff credited his longtime collaborator Taylor Swift for helping launch his career as one of the most accomplished producers of his generation, recalling in an interview that Swift’s decision to give Antonoff more creative control rather than go to a bigger-name producer lead him down his path.
“I actually would say she’s the first person who allowed me to produce, really, because I was already doing it,” Antonoff told Variety, who named him the publication’s Producer of the Decade on Thursday. “The way my early collaboration with her came along was, I was making tracks, and she would write all the lyrics and melodies, then we’d get together and record it — it wasn’t that deep.
“And when it reached the point where, in the past, someone said ‘now we’ll hand it off to so-and-so producer,’ she just said, ‘It’s done,’” Antonoff continued. “I was sort of shocked — and thrilled! I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve had such an incredibly long and beautiful collaboration.”
Since producing several tracks on 1989, he’s become one of the most prolific producers in the industry, working on all of Swift’s subsequent albums while also collaborating with stars including Lorde, St. Vincent, and Lana Del Rey. This year alone he produced Sabrina Carpenter’s first Number One single “Please Please Please,” as well as many of the tracks on Kendrick Lamar’s surprise album GNX. He won three consecutive Grammys for Producer of the Year from 2022 through 2024.
This isn’t the first time Antonoff credited Swift for his production work. Back in February when accepting his latest Producer of the Year Grammy, he thanked Swift, saying she “kicked that fucking door open for me.”
“There’s all these people saying ‘no it’s got to go to a big-name person,” Antonoff said in the speech. “We made a song called “Out of The Woods” for 1989, when I was waiting for that call that says ‘now this goes to some big name person,’ she said ‘let’s mix this shit.’ I love you to death, Taylor.”
