If Taylor Swift has only one fan, it’s BFF and longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff.
Antonoff, 39, proudly defended Swift, 34, in a Los Angeles Times interview published on Wednesday, February 28, admitting that he can be “a little bitch sometimes” when critics come for Swift’s songwriting talent.
“But you come for my friend Taylor, you’re toast to me. [It’s] like challenging someone’s faith in God. You just don’t go there,” he said.
Antonoff went on to call out Kanye West, whose rocky history with Swift dates back to 2009. In Antonoff’s candid opinion, the 46-year-old rapper “just needs his diaper changed so badly.”
When asked whether he would ever consider working with West as a producer, Antonoff laughed off the suggestion. “It’s been a long time since I would’ve taken Kanye’s call,” he added. “I’m so incredibly bored when someone doesn’t have the sauce anymore, so they go elsewhere to shock. It’s just a remarkable waste of space.”
Antonoff took aim at West via X weeks earlier after learning that one of West’s Vultures albums shares its March 8 release date with the upcoming self-titled Bleachers record. (The first part of Vultures, a collaborative project with Ty Dolla $ign, dropped earlier this month.)
“Kanye on bleachers release date is hilarious little cry baby bitch,” Antonoff quipped in a January 23 social media post.
Antonoff and Swift have worked together on 10 albums since meeting in 2012, praising one another’s contributions and talent throughout their friendship. “Sometimes he sits at the piano and we both just start ad-libbing and the song seems to create itself,” Swift told The New York Times in May 2017. “His excitement and exuberance about writing songs is contagious. He’s an absolute joy. That’s why everyone loves him. I personally wouldn’t trust someone who didn’t.”
While celebrating the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in October 2023, Swift reflected on the first song she and Antonoff joined forces on: “Sweeter Than Fiction” from the 2013 movie One Chance.
“There you’ll stand ten feet tall, I will say ‘I knew it all along,'” Swift wrote via Instagram, sharing throwback photos of herself and Antonoff. “This song has always made me think of my friend Jack. It was the first song we made together and watching him challenge himself and make beautiful art over the years has been the thrill of a lifetime. How can he be 6 years older than me and also somehow still be my precocious young son? We may never know. ‘Sweeter Than Fiction (My Version)’ is now available exclusively at Target on Tangerine vinyl 🍊.”
Antonoff, meanwhile, opened up about the surprising challenges of revisiting Swift’s music for her rerecordings. (Swift is rereleasing her first six albums following a dispute with her former record label, Big Machine.)
“There are so many things on so many of those sessions that I was like, ‘Oh, you little freak,'” Antonoff told Vulture in December 2023 of revisiting the songs he produced for 1989 (Taylor’s Version). “Little layering I would do then, ’cause you go through phases, and it made me feel really sweet. That younger version of me that was just piling s–t on, I mean, ‘Out of the Woods’ is just like [the] kitchen sink.”
He likened the experience of recreating the songs to “finding an old diary,” saying that his initial vision for 1989 was a “weird, messy symphony and I love it to this day.”
