Jack Antonoff is a contemporary pop architect. He’s collaborated on albums with the likes of Taylor Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, and The 1975..
With help from Jack Antonoff, The 1975 produced their most focused album so far. Here the band returns to their sonic touchstones of juiced dance rhythms, ’80s soul guitar, wavy synthesizers, and over-the-top pop hooks. And frontman Matt Healy ditches his usual nose for personal dystopia in exchange for the hope of love.
Healy can be, to be polite, clawingly trying. He doesn’t seem to have met a rock cliché he didn’t like. But, most importantly, he seems sincere. If being annoying is the price one pays for sincerity these days, then it’s worth the cost. Healy still brings plenty of dirty jokes with his new message of “love will save us all.” In a world in peril, The 1975 radiates a lighthearted light in a dark world hurling toward doom. “About You” is a standout track with bouncing strings, silky horns, and a gorgeous vocal from Healy. Antonoff steadies the ship for The 1975, taking all the scatterbrained energy of their frontman and turning it into the band’s best record yet.
Taylor Swift’s albums have followed the modern trend of recording with heaps of producers. While you can’t argue with the results, sometimes the releases sound like two or three albums stitched together. On Midnights, Swift settles in with Jack Antonoff, resulting in a beautiful, moody, late-night-drive album.
Lana Del Rey joins Swift on “Snow on the Beach,” and immediately everything sounds warmer. Here, Swift leaves the Bon Iver cabin of folklore and trades earthy Americana for hazy dreamscapes. Sometimes, she misses the mark. On “Vigilante Shit,” Swift attempts Billie Eilish’s dark pop, but it comes across like she’s dressing like the “bad guy” singer for Halloween. She’s at her best wearing her own clothes. Swift excels in diaristic writing, where she sounds like she’s sharing journal passages with close friends.
Lana Del Rey opens this album with a noir hymn, singing, And I’m gonna take mine of you with me. She name-checks the late mainstream country crooner John Denver (“Rocky Mountain High”) on “The Grants,” familiar territory for her as she chronicles the psyche of America
Del Rey’s writing feels like a search for what she wants and what she fears. Then, she uses source material to find its meaning, and her songs are preservations of a found journal with notes on the human condition. Even before her work with Antonoff, Del Rey made some of the most exciting and daring pop music out there. On her 2012 debut, Born to Die, the critical mob screamed, “Charlatan!” But mobs are often loud but wrong.
Del Rey has proved them wrong over and over again, in fact. Antonoff is a valuable producer because he doesn’t leave his fingerprints on the album. He’s a pop music genius with the brains to let the artists sound like themselves. On an album of highlights, “A&W” stands out as a bedroom ballad questioning society’s paternalistic view of women: It’s not about havin’ someone to love me anymore / No, this is the experience of bein’ an American whore.
Lana Del Rey is one of America’s greatest songwriters. (Seriously.) Norman Rockwell was famous for illustrating American culture. Del Rey dares to name her album after Rockwell, attempting to do just as he did. It’s irreverent and bold and encompasses everything to love about her. She acts like an American myth while exposing it.
What it means to be alive is explored and deduced across baroque piano ballads, singing as Hemingway wrote without all the commas and periods getting in the way. Antonoff beautifully orchestrates the album with gauzy instrumentation. The songs are Venice Beach sepia-filtered sketches of the messiness of being alive. The vocals sound like Del Rey’s voice memos wrapped in lush orchestration. Norman F—ing Rockwell! is one of the decade’s best albums. Antonoff lives in the company of the best of contemporary American pop.
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