Jack Antonoff talks working on ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’: “I would liken it to finding an old diary”

Jack Antonoff has spoken about the process of working on Taylor Swift‘s latest re-recorded album, ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’.

The Bleachers frontman, who was a producer on the original 2014 hit record, discussed various projects from his career during a new interview with Vulture. At one point in the conversation, he recalled the “hardest part” of recreating his ‘1989’ songs.

“I don’t work with any soft synths, so everything is a sound that’s made in the room. The funny thing is you can’t recall the sounds. So all the Bleachers guys helped a ton on that stuff,” Antonoff explained.

The outlet then noted how this was specifically on ‘Out Of The Woods’, ‘I Wish You Would’ and ‘You Are In Love’, which were the three tracks Antonoff originally produced for ‘1989’.

He continued: “It became a really fun project for me and the band. It was like, ‘All right, Mikey [Freedom Hart], here are the Juno tracks, do your best. Sean [Hutchinson], here’s the drum stuff, see what you can do’.

“And then I’ll have X amount of tracks that are just sound from the room. The internet was really interested in what sounded like a seagull sound in ‘Is It Over Now?’ It was really fun, because it was all these analog instruments that we know and love: Moog model Ds, Juno-6s.”

Antonoff went on to compare working on ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ to “finding an old diary”, adding: “There are so many things on so many of those sessions that I was like, ‘Oh, you little freak’. 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 shit on, I mean, ‘Out Of The Woods’ is just like kitchen sink. That’s the glory of it: As someone who didn’t really have any success as a producer, there was no reason for me to pile all that shit on other than it was just giving me a lot of joy.”

He concluded: “And it made this weird, messy symphony and I love it to this day.”

‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ outsold the original in its release week, making it Swift’s best first week for an album ever. The LP also broke new records on Spotify shortly after it landed on the platform.

In a five-star review, NME hailed the pop star’s most recent re-record as “an undeniably fascinating exercise”.