Jack Antonoff
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Umbrella
4.6 • 69.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 138 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jack Antonoff (Bleachers, everyone for ten minutes) is a Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, and frontman. Jack joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up as an unsupervised middle child in suburban New Jersey, processing profound family loss at a young age, and finding early identity through obsessive music discovery. Jack and Dax talk about grinding through DIY touring as a teenager, the evolution from punk purist to global pop collaborator, and how environment and movement shape his creative process. Jack explains why grief clarifies what truly matters, how the anxiety of the well running dry fuels his restlessness, and why starting over is the key to staying alive creatively.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. |
| 0:02.7 | I'm Dak Shepard. |
| 0:03.5 | I'm joined by Lily Padman. |
| 0:05.0 | Hi there. |
| 0:05.8 | And today we have one of the most successful music producers of the last decade and also an |
| 0:12.0 | incredible singer and songwriter in his own right. |
| 0:14.8 | Yes. |
| 0:15.3 | Jack Antonoff. |
| 0:17.1 | He has produced acclaimed albums from Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Florence Welsh, and many more. |
| 0:25.7 | His Bleacher's albums include Strange Desire, Gone Now, Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, the self-titled Bleacher's Fourth, and now the fifth album, everyone for 10 minutes. And I was so |
| 0:40.7 | grateful for this episode because I was in the dark on bleachers and now I'm going to... |
| 0:45.2 | Now you're in the light. Oh my God. One song got me. You're staring directly into the sun. |
| 0:49.9 | As you'll hear, please enjoy this very sweet artist, Jack Antonoff. |
| 0:55.4 | This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. |
| 0:58.5 | I feel like Spring always does this thing where you realize you've been thinking about something for a long time. |
| 1:03.2 | And suddenly it feels like, okay, maybe I actually do something with it. |
| 1:07.5 | Totally. It's less pressure, but more like readiness. |
| 1:11.6 | Yeah, like you've been sitting on an idea or a project or even just a perspective you care about. And now you're like, |
| 1:16.0 | maybe this deserves to exist somewhere outside of my own head. In May being Mental Health |
| 1:19.9 | Awareness Month, there's already this broader conversation happening. People are more open, more |
| 1:24.1 | curious, more willing to engage. Which is where something like Squarespace comes in. |
| 1:28.3 | It makes that jump from idea to actual thing feel way less overwhelming. |
... |
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