Lorde, Taylor Swift, Lana Del Ray, Clairo. What do these artists have in common? They’re all a part of a club of women who frequently work with producer Jack Antonoff, a group the “Royals” singer called “Jack’s stable” in her interview with The New York Times. Except, as the singer-songwriter notes, they’re much more than that.
As Lorde explained in the interview published Thursday (Aug. 12), Antonoff — as great of a collaborator as he is — doesn’t deserve the credit for Lorde’s music — she does.
“I haven’t made a Jack Antonoff record,” she told NYT in an interview about her upcoming album, Solar Power. “I’ve made a Lorde record and he’s helped me make it and very much deferred to me on production and arrangement. Jack would agree with this. To give him that amount of credit is frankly insulting.”
Oh, and the conspiracy theories over her and Jack’s relationship being anything more than professional and platonic? Cut those out, too. “She called the narrative — which has also included speculation about the pair’s romantic and sexual life — ‘retro’ and ‘sexist,'” according to the article.
Though the 24-year-old popstar told the paper she recognizes Antonoff’s production has certain recognizable trademarks, she has full control and direction over what her music sounds like. She even went as far as saying that she isn’t actually a fan of and weeds out some of his go-to sounds. “I know that there are certain hallmarks of what Jack does and some of those things I really love and some of them I don’t like,” she said. “And I beat them out of the work that we do together.”
The work she’s talking about is coming in the form of her third studio album, which is scheduled to drop Aug. 20. She told The New York Times that she’s done chasing the commercial success of her “Royals” days, and is instead opting to flex her songwriting prowess. In fact, there’s only one instance of the 808s she used to hold so dear on the upcoming album. “There’s definitely not a smash,” she said of the songs on the album. “It makes sense that there wouldn’t be a smash, because I don’t even know really what the smashes are now.”
Lorde also delved further into what her life’s been like these past few years in between her tour for Melodrama and the promotion cycle for Solar Power. In order to curb her internet addiction — which was evidenced by her phone’s reports that her screen time was getting up to 11 hours a day — she’s had her friends lock her out of her social media accounts and block YouTube from her computer.
“I remember sitting up in bed and realizing I could get to the end of my life and have done this every day,” she said. “And it’s up to me to choose, right now. So I just sort of chose.”