MBW’s Key Songs In The Life Of… is a series in which we ask influential music industry figures about the tracks that have defined their life and career so far. Here, multi-Grammy-winning songwriter and producer, Jack Antonoff, unveils his musical autobiography. The Key Songs… series is supported by Sony Music Publishing.
He’s been a defining influence on the sound of 2025, co-writing and producing most of Kendrick Lamar’s GNX and Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend – with his fingerprints on chart-topping smashes Luther and Manchild.
But when MBW catches up with Jack Antonoff, speaking from a studio in Portugal, it’s not to discuss the hits of today. It’s to talk about the music that made him who he is.
Throughout our discussion of his Key Songs playlist, Antonoff repeatedly returns to themes of authenticity, restraint, and the mysterious alchemy of perfect production.
He’s particularly animated when discussing AI’s limitations in creative fields, likening its ability/inability to write a joke or a moving song to “asking a clown to come over and fix the electricity – two entirely different things”.
“A great joke is in some ways very similar to a great song,” he continues. “Both play with everything happening in your past, present, and future, creating a visceral reaction, something you cannot control.
“People can lie to themselves in politics, in society, about who they are and what they feel – they can put on all these different masks. But you can’t lie to yourself about music and comedy.
“Comedy doesn’t just make you laugh; comedy reveals what you think is funny, whether you like it or not. It’s the same with music. It’s the great revealer of people’s hearts and souls.”
“People can lie to themselves in politics, in society, about who they are and what they feel – they can put on all these different masks. But you can’t lie to yourself about music and comedy.”
These aren’t just abstract theories for Antonoff. His approach to production – whether working with pop superstars or indie darlings – is rooted in a deep respect for the listener.
“There’s zero part of me that thinks ill of the public’s intelligence when it comes to music,” he tells MBW of his approach in the studio, even when sculpting pop hits that stream in their billions.
“I don’t see my work in pop music as being in any sort of service industry,” he adds. “I’m not trying to please. It’s about making something that feels incredible, honest, and worth putting out.”
He’s equally thoughtful about the music industry’s snowballing obsession with artist visibility.
Discussing Fiona Apple‘s genius, he suggests that viewing her quiet public profile as an anomaly in modern music “speaks to how marketing-obsessed we’ve gotten. All that matters is your songs, the way you record them, and the way you perform them.”
Here, in his own words, are the seven tracks that have shaped Jack Antonoff’s journey — from a middle-class childhood in New Jersey through teenage angst, devastating personal loss, and ultimately becoming one of music’s most sought-after hitmakers…
1) The Beatles, Happiness Is A Warm Gun (1968)
When I was young, my parents just played tons of music in the house. My dad is this brilliant ragtime guitar player who grew up in New Jersey and somehow ended up taking guitar lessons from Reverend Gary Davis.
There was really eclectic music in the house, everything from ragtime to British music, music from every generation. Happiness Is A Warm Gun is particularly significant because it’s the first production memory I ever had: I hear everything, and I’m utterly fascinated as to why these choices were made.
I’d always remembered hearing music, loving music, loving melodies and instruments, all these things about songs. But this was the first time thinking: ‘Holy shit, why is that voice coming from this speaker? Why is the time signature changing? Why does the guitar sound like it’s melting?’
“The Beatles were just like a fact. You didn’t fuck with it. It was a fact.”
Obviously, Happiness Is A Warm Gun is one of the greatest productions ever, but all of that jumped out at me – partially because of its brilliance, partially because of its panning, partially because of its oddity in general.
I’m probably nine at this time, becoming acquainted with the popular music of the era – Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, things like that.
But in my house, The Beatles were just a fact. You didn’t fuck with it. It was a fact.
My mother was a nurse who’d stopped working to raise us kids, and my father had a company that did carpet cleaning. It was a very normal, middle-class American existence.
The way they raised me, there was everything, and then there was The Beatles.
2) NOFX, The Decline (1999)
I always loved NOFX growing up. But when they put out The Decline… it’s basically like a rock opera. It’s 40 or so minutes, it’s one song and never stops.
At that time, in mainstream culture, politics were [treated as] separate. So a lot of things I was learning about — global politics, race politics, veganism – came much more from underground music. I loved bands like Bad Brains and Propagandhi and things like that.
The Decline connected a lot of interests for me, because there was a theater to it. I still think it would make one of the greatest plays or musicals of all time. I studied it from beginning to end — the way they sewed it together.
“The biggest takeaway from The Decline is the intention for serious listening.”
Listening to The Decline, that’s my root of throwing rules out [in the studio], making really harsh changes this way and that way. I guess that started with Happiness Is A Warm Gun too, but The Decline is a very large-scale version of it.
I guess the biggest takeaway from The Decline is the intention for serious, serious listening. It was almost decidedly fan-only.
Its architecture makes it impossible to have a casual listen, and I think that’s a really important thing for artists.
There’s zero part of me that thinks ill of the public’s intelligence when it comes to music. I don’t know where this narrative [of pop fans not listening as intently as fans of other genres] comes from, but I’m never interested in making anything immediate.
Music and songwriting, recorded music, is a very precious thing and meant to be expressed only at the highest level – even the simplest song. I’ve never understood how anyone could [enter the studio with the intent] to dumb anything down.
Music comes from the heart and the soul; I don’t know how you would even begin to dumb that down. It would be like trying to dry out an ocean; it makes no sense to me.
3) Air, La Femme D’Argent (1998)
This was a time in my life of attempting to escape a very acute state of grief. I started taking drugs, I was on tour a lot, and I was looking for things that really took me away from myself.
My younger sister died of brain cancer when I was 18. It happened around the exact same time that I started to leave home and tour as a musician.
When I think back on it, it was miraculous that I was able to move, let alone tour. But I was living in this very compartmentalized emotional space, trying to live a life on the road while grounded in this grief.
What I know now, that I didn’t know then, is that some things are just too big. I was trying to hold it all in, rapidly moving between complete breakdown and utter escapism.
“In the eye of the storm, I couldn’t articulate it. It was too big.”
Someone put on Moon Safari, which is undeniably a great album, all of its own genre.
As soon as I heard this first song – this plucked bass, very Beatles-esque, but with this ambient thing – I got totally lost in it. This music really transported me.
But the biggest thing, which I think about every day when I’m in the studio: There’s a moment in this song, towards the end, the whole thing is building and building, climaxing, and then right at the tip of the climax, when it’s just about to completely explode, a tambourine enters, doing 16th notes. One instrument. And this tambourine, doing 16th notes, is bigger, more impactful, and more euphoric than a 5,000-piece orchestra.
Whether I’m consciously thinking about it or not, that moment, this song, is such a part of my DNA when it comes to thinking about restraint, moving mountains with something tiny.
Interestingly enough, during that time, I wasn’t able to write very well. In the depths of the grief, the eye of the storm, I couldn’t articulate it. It was too vast.
I had to distance myself from it; time needed to exist before I could express it in songs. Now it’s in all of my writing.
4) Tom Waits, I Never Talk To Strangers (1977)
I love Tom Waits. He’s in my top five favorite songwriters, and he’s lived many different lives.
He’s a great inspiration to try new things. He obviously had his more working-class songwriter phase, then almost like a pirate-sounding phase, a spooky phase.
But it’s when he goes so far into this crooner jazz place… that’s this song – a duet with Bette Midler.
“It reminds me of thinking that I can make a jazz record at the same time I’m making a hardcore record, which is something I still think.”
It’s just amazing that he can do songs like this and do songs like Hold On, do songs like Time, and do songs like Singapore. It gives me a lot of faith.
It reminds me of being young and in love and thinking I could make a jazz record at the same time as making a hardcore record, which is something I still think.
I listened to this a lot in my late teens; a girl I was dating at the time would play it a lot. It’s just one of those pieces of work that reminds you of a person and a place in time.
5) OutKast, Babylon (1996)
With OutKast, it’s impossible to pick anything, because it’s all so brilliant. But for some reason, this song is at the core of their spirit to me.
When I heard it, when I got this album [ATLiens], it was life-changing.
“OutKast and Tom Waits kind of live in the same part of my brain.”
To me, OutKast, much like Tom Waits, treat genre as a jacket to throw on. It’s in no way the centerpiece. The centerpiece is just the heart and soul of what they’re doing.
OutKast and Tom Waits kind of live in the same part of my brain.
6) Fiona Apple, Paper Bag (1999)
In my late 20s, I started to think about engineering and recording on a different level. Sometimes you just hear something that you never forget, and it changes you forever. This is one of those sonic moments.
The song is incredible. The recording is incredible. Obviously, she’s as good as anyone can possibly get.
But when the two drums come in, the panning left and right, the way they bounce off each other, they’re pulling forward, but they’re also so warm. Like that tambourine on Moon Safari, it’s just with me all the time, whether I know it or not. One of those deep sonic references.
“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t listen to Fiona Apple.”
It’s weird [that some people] see Fiona Apple as operating on the periphery of the music business. That’s only out of her choice not to be very present in public promotion, and it’s a view that speaks to how marketing-obsessed we’ve gotten.
Her music couldn’t be less peripheral. It’s front and center – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t listen to Fiona Apple.
To me, she’s an artist who makes brilliant things and needs her space, and that’s not weird. It’s only weird through the lens of everyone being constantly visible.
There’s nothing wrong with being constantly visible, by the way, but you should only do that if that’s something that you don’t mind.
Fiona Apple is just a great inspiration of somebody where all that matters is your songs, the way you record them, and the way you perform them.
7) TLC, Unpretty (1999)
Unpretty is perfect. The recording, the way it kind of moves and floats, I find it very uplifting. It almost feels like a meditation.
I don’t really know why I connect with it so much. The sprinkly, high-end nature of the guitars and the beat – it’s just doing this bizarre, magical thing, and I feel like I’m floating when I listen to it.
“It’s just doing this bizarre, magical thing, and I feel like I’m floating when I listen to it.”
It has a sonic quality that you can’t really dissect.
I don’t remember the first time I heard it, but it’s just always been there. It’s a constant in my life.
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