Good Albums Don’t Necessarily Take A Village

Whether it’s Lorde’s Melodrama or Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Antonoff isn’t a hired gun for pop stars — he often makes entire albums with them, and he’s not alone. Some of the biggest and brightest pop titles from recent years have also largely been made by one artist and one producer, including Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We

Go? (with her brother, FINNEAS) and Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour (with Daniel Nigro).

I have this North Star theory: Good records are made if everyone is looking at the same thing, whether that’s two people, three people, four people. Obviously, the more people you add, the harder it is to have that vision completely align. The cohesion is more important than anything. Brilliant people can be together, but if they’re looking at different things, what do you have? It’s like peanut butter and fish.

A lot of that happens because a label perspective can sometimes push that narrative: “Oh, we don’t have it, let’s get this person in!” What I don’t believe in — and have had some rough experiences with — is letting people in who are going to act like they have “the sauce” and put things down. There’s no cynicism in the studio. It’s a very fragile place, as it should be. There’s nothing easier in the world than making an artist feel like they’re shit and that you have the answers. I’ve seen so many people do it, and it’s horrible.

And it’s always some fucking character who is dealing with their own insecurity.

The goal isn’t to “do your thing” on someone else’s music — the goal is to make the best, most alive version of this vision. Some people might have more of a signature sound, and that’s cool. I feel really intent on my goal, which is to make great records, and the only way that I’ve been able to get close to figuring that out is just immersing myself and not drawing at anything that feels known or safe to me.