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Jack Antonoff abruptly ended an interview with a Dutch news outlet when asked about the new album of his friend and frequent collaborator Taylor Swift.
The 39-year-old musician and producer reportedly hung up on a reporter from NRC after being asked about his involvement with Swift’s upcoming 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.
“You know I don’t talk about that,” he told the news outlet.
“If you’re looking for clickbait, you’ve come to the wrong place. Thank you for this conversation.”
Laura Sisk, Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift, Aaron Dessner and Jonathan Low, winners of the Album of the Year award for Folklore
(Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
But he did speak about working with Swift earlier in the interview, and how his work with Bleachers differed from his producing for Swift or Lana Del Rey.
He said, “I don’t see it as producing. I create music with my friends. It comes as it comes. I’m not the kind of producer to bark commands from behind a mixing board. I involve myself in the music itself; the way you can steer the creative process … Being able to listen to each other well is one thing. The artists I work with trust that I can help them make their music better.”
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published last month he confirmed that he has “completed” work on The Tortured Poets Department, but did not divulge more details.
Swift is famous for leaving Easter eggs in her promotional material, social media, music videos, song lyrics, tour visuals, and even the clothes she wears. So while fans have to wait till the album release to hear the new music and which direction she is going this time, Swifties have had plenty to do, creating their own theories and looking for Easter eggs in the cover art and tracklist.
Antonoff and Swift have been collaborators for a long time, since they first worked together on her album 1989 in 2014. They continued to work together on her next five albums – Reputation, Lover, Folklore, Evermore, and Midnights – as well as the re-recordings of her first four albums, Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), and 1989 (Taylor’s Version).
Swift announced The Tortured Poets Department at the 2024 Grammy awards where she took home two awards for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights. Along with the Album of the Year win, Antonoff also won the award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical.
While receiving her award for her Best Pop Vocal Album, Swift announced: “(The way I can celebrate) is by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the past two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19th”.
“It’s called The Tortured Poets Department and I’m going to go post the cover right now backstage.”
TTPD, which will feature collabs with artists like Post Malone and Florence + the Machine, is scheduled to drop April 19.
