Jack Antonoff doesn’t appear ready to field song requests in the wake of his public split from his estranged wife, Margaret Qualley.
“Absolutely not,” Antonoff, 42, said with a laugh during the final night of his band Bleachers’ five-night residency at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on Tuesday, September 15, after a fan shouted a request for his song, “Let’s Get Married,” as seen in social media footage.
“Read the news, brother,” the songwriter added, seemingly referring to his recent breakup. “No, I love that song. And I wrote it, like, 11 years ago.”
Multiple sources confirmed to Us in July that Antonoff and Qualley, 31, had called it quits after nearly three years of marriage.
While “Let’s Get Married” may seem like a typical love song about their relationship, which began in 2021, Antonoff actually wrote the track years before their romance blossomed.
“I wrote this the day after [President Donald Trump] was elected [in 2016],” Antonoff said in a video shared via X in November 2017 of the song, which was released that June as part of Bleachers’ album Gone Now.
“When the election happened, I felt not only devastated, but also freaked out. I thought, ‘Bad people don’t live in our house.’ Who is it? What was it?” he continued. “ It made me want to grab everything and say, ‘Let’s get married, let’s stay here.’ It’s not quite the love song it seems.”
In “Let’s Get Married,” Antonoff sings, “Sit down, breathe and just listen / I want my honey / They think they know what we’re going through, they don’t know nothing / And I know it’s bad when we look out / But bad, bad people don’t live in our house / So I’m gonna get right for you, honey / I’ll take all of my medicine, spend you all my money, yeah / And I know it’s hard enough to love me / But I woke up in a safe house singing /’ Honey, let’s get married.’”
Following Antonoff and Qualley’s split, a rep for the Maid actress shut down speculation the split was anything but amicable.
“The narratives running in the press about Margaret and Jack are categorically untrue,” her rep told Us in a statement on July 10. “There are no trust issues. There was no infidelity or anything outside of respect and partnership in this relationship. They have deep love and care for one another.”
The statement continued, “There are only two people in this marriage, and the sources who are talking to the press and commenting on their relationship are not people who know them. Please respect their privacy.”
