My grandparents got out of Poland right before the Holocaust and came here, and the only thing that mattered was surviving.

Jack Antonoff

Categorized in : Right Here Grandparents Holocaust

Everyone wants to get better. You go through life, you want to shift and change and get better. No one ever says, "I'm better." They say, "I wanna get better."

get-better want

The best pop music is the songs that a group of people can dance to, but you can also listen to in your bed and cry. That's something obviously that The Beatles started and... so having that darkness there opens another door.

doors song people

Usually it seems like either you sacrifice something and a lot of people will pay attention, or you stay true to yourself and appeal to a smaller group of people, but now we've managed to do what we felt was the right thing to do in our heart and had it reach a wide audience. It feels very rare.

sacrifice heart people

I think that everyone at any age should ask themselves, 'where do I want to be today, where do I want to be tomorrow, and where do I want to be in a hundred years?' We all have clear answers to those questions. We only have so much time. It's a real shame if we don't spend our lives trying to do that.

real years thinking

Black and white creates a strange dreamscape that color never can... by Jack Antonoff

Black and white creates a strange dreamscape that color never can.

black-and-white strange color

So many boys and girls talk the same way, listen to the same music, look the same. If I'm out, I'll notice the person who looks different before I notice the person who's, "really hot."

girl boys way

My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.

growing-up father thinking

The only people playing the roles of classic rock stars are hip-hop artists, now. Kanye's stage persona, and the way he approaches making albums, and the way he wants to be better than everyone else? That's reminiscent of Freddie Mercury. That's reminiscent of the Beatles.

rocks stars artist

God, just shoot me the day I start making music you can just put on in the car and have a conversation over it.

over-it car conversation

I first met Taylor Swift at an awards show, which is a pretty easy place to suss out who is cool. Right off the bat I was like, This is a person I want to know. Just because she's a very famous person doesn't mean she doesn't exist outside of that space. She's wonderful and special and treats me really nicely and we have a great, mature relationship. She's on a short list of people like that for me.

awards space mean

I think what's cool about about going on a co-headline tour is everyone's bringing a huge show, so it's not like opening band, opening band, then here's the big show. It's like two big shows.

band two thinking

I don't ever want to do anything that's obvious, and I also want to find ways to do things that are extremely new and exciting and can make sense in bizarre ways. I always want things to make sense in really bizarre ways.

bizarre want way

I'll say about Fueled By Ramen is, I don't know what anyone else's experience has been, but we signed to them as Fun. We already had a fanbase, we already had music out there so when they signed us they were signing our vision. I always think it's so weird when people think that Fueled By Raman are trying to change us or mould us into something else, as we weren't a bunch of kids playing in a garage who joined a label and then collectively worked on a vision, like, they signed us with the intention of letting us be Fun.

fun kids thinking

It probably all started with The Beatles, and then I guess it goes out from there. Springsteen... Fleetwood Mac... I mean, that's all so inherent in us that when we're making records now, we take a lot from the artists who are around us.

records artist mean

Of course, the majority of us would speak up in the face of outrageous bigotry, but do we speak up in a social situation when someone casually refers to something as 'gay'? If we don't, we are standing with the homophobes whom we are quietly fighting.

majority gay fighting

Social paralysis is strong and stands firmly in the way of change on the ground level. As allies, we have to prepare ourselves to step into the fire when necessary, even - and especially - when said fire is merely a still-lit cigarette tossed carelessly onto the street.

allies strong fire

You have to look at the body of work you're doing and then figure out the best way for people to digest it. You want people to come in and listen to all of it and understand the entire project. I think it's bad when everyone's like, "This is how you have to do it."

people looks thinking

I think fans get bored of the pre-roll. I also think they don't care about the pre-roll, they just want the album.

bored want thinking

As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.

choices rights two

If I was a supervillain, I'd create this universal, cosmic rule where every time an old, shitty, right-wing white man says something unsavory about a young woman, he would just get the clap immediately.

white-man wings men