Jack Antonoff has achieved a rare type of success in pop music by ignoring everything going on around him. As the sound of radio has grown sleeker and sexier, Antonoff’s music remains bold and bombastic. He’s worked as a producer and songwriter on music beloved on a wide scale (Sara Bareilles’ “Brave,” Zayn and Taylor’s “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”) and more cultishly appreciated (Tegan and Sara’s “How Come You Don’t Want Me,” Grimes’ “Entropy”)—but you know his work when you hear it. Antonoff’s first solo album as Bleachers, 2014’s Strange Desire, was a lovable exploration of the ideas at the core of his sound: all the piano breaks and gated-reverb drums, the gang vocals and the ceaseless, head-spinning barrage of hooks. But to the world at large, it was less of a breakthrough than a sturdy business card. By the end of that year, he’d be better known for accompanying one of the world’s biggest pop stars on her biggest album yet.
In an interview with Pitchfork, Antonoff discussed his guiding principle as a collaborator: “If I ever work with someone else, all that I think about is: Do you want to make the best album you’ve ever made in your life, or not?” It’s a lofty standard, but one he also sets for himself as a solo artist. The best song on Strange Desire was called “I Wanna Get Better”: While its title was a response to hitting rock bottom, it’s a sentiment that also applies to the heights of his success. In fact, if there’s any major similarity between Antonoff and Bruce Springsteen—an artist he frequently cites as an inspiration—it’s his unabashed ambition: a conviction so earnest and ingrained that it could be mistaken for humility.
Regardless of what people think of Gone Now, Antonoff's stately and uneven sophomore album, he’s already mythologizing it and shaping a world around its songs. Antonoff clearly believes that Gone Now is his masterpiece, and everything around the record suggests as much. He’s somehow touring the bedroom where it was conceived as a “moving, living art installation”: an act of hubris so indulgent even Jay Z waited 20 years before attempting it. From beginning to end, Gone Now has all the affectations of an over-the-top pop masterpiece. There are spoken-word samples, saxophone solos, and sound effects; guest appearances, multipart reprises, and allusions. In the opening lines of the self-reflexive first track “Dream of Mickey Mantle,” Antonoff is romanticizing the album’s creation: “All the hope I had when I was young/I hope I wasn’t wrong/I miss those days so I sing a ‘Don’t Take the Money’ song.” Here, he poses the driving question of Gone Now: Is Antonoff really as great as he thinks he is?