See Jack Antonoff Build Beatlesesque New Song Step by Step in Home Studio
Bleachers‘ Jack Antonoff details the elaborate construction of “Goodmorning,” a Beatles-esque pop track from the band’s recently issued second LP, Gone Now, in an exclusive Rolling Stone video.
The singer-songwriter conducted the interview from his studio at his Brooklyn home (shared with girlfriend and Girls creator Lena Dunham); the studio space is crammed with synthesizers, a grand piano, a computer and numerous posters and magazine cut-outs, including a photo of the female stars of Twin Peaks, famously used on a 1990 Rolling Stone cover. “You give meaning to a space based on what you do in it,” Antonoff said. “I think the album sort of sounds like what it’s like in here, which is just me jumping around, twisting things and turning things until I hear something that catches me off-guard.”
The Bleachers mastermind (who has also created hits for Taylor Swift, Lorde and others) said he designed “Goodmorning” as the sonic equivalent of waking up in an “unbelievably potent” headspace, where you are “present but don’t have the weight of your life on you.”
He initially based the song on an iPhone-recorded descending piano progression, and recruited Atlanta hip-hop production team Organized Noize for bass and a suspended, “really eerie” synth tone that “feels like that depression of waking up.” From there, he fleshed out the arrangement with a sprawling noise collage of old voicemails, a crying baby and other samples, and he capped off the production with a friend’s “Penny Lane”-styled trumpet flourish.
“It’s easy to put something in a song that’s surprising,” he said. “It’s hard to put something in a song that surprising – but exciting.”
Bleachers launched a North American tour this month in support of Gone Now. Throughout the trek, Antonoff is hauling around a portion of his childhood bedroom as traveling art installation.