Are You a Swifty?

Not a swifty, but I’m a schwifty. 

@wesheadley Unlike her previous LP, Lust For Life, which had no less than 17 different writing credits on it, Norman Fucking Rockwell! was another Jack Antonoff job.
I don’t dislike Lana Del Rey. Not my fave, but she’s alright.
Jack Antonoff…that’s another story.
His role, as I see it, is to take artists with talent and find a way to bland them up for mass consumption.
He must have good social skills or something. He’s curried the favor of many a top-selling artist (including Swift) and receives good words from each. I find the music he has worked on in a producer/co-writer capacity as well as his own stuff (whatever outfit that may be, Bleachers, solo, whatever) to largely be bland and lame. It seems he’s found a way to be considered some kind of svengali who somehow retains at least a modicum of street cred while making lame music that people with no taste think is good.
One of my favorite current artists, Annie Clark (St. Vincent) had made 4 knockout LPs (I consider two of them, Actor and St. Vincent, to be classics) before ’17’s Masseduction. I thought that one was a letdown. Whatever. A great artist is entitled to have a so-so one after four straight killers. The next one, ‘21’s Daddy’s Home, was another disappointment. This time, I did some research. Found the common denominator: Jack Antonoff. I then did some research on this Jack Antonoff character. Came to the conclusion he sucks.
I don’t have much skin in the game with the other artists he’s produced.
I was just listening to early ‘10s Lana and was reminded that it’s pretty good. It’s not like I’m gonna be pissed if her music starts to be lame. I don’t like it enough to be bothered. St. Vincent was different; once I realized he, based on his track record, may have largely been the reason St. Vincent’s music became more bland and lame, I was indeed pissed.
I really hope her next LP is Antonoff-free and returns to pre-Antonoff quality.

@tylermunns

I’ve slowly, very slowly, come to the conclusion you have come to about Antonoff. He HAS made Lana more bland and I keep hoping she’ll find a new producer, or go back to one like Dan Auerbach. Her writing I think remains strong... but the music has become increasingly bland. I’ve checked out his band the Bleachers and found them to sound highly derivative and mediocre-- like a bad Bruce Springsteen tribute band.

I have not give St. Vincent much of a chance, but bought Daddy’s Home and was not too thrilled about what I heard-- may try listening to some of her older material.

Antonoff does seem to be a kind of a vampire that sucks the life out of many of the artists he produces. Had high hopes for Lorde’s last couple of albums-- but the last one in particular was a real snooze-- just went and checked who produced it-- Jack Antonoff, again!

Oh no….

@wesheadley 
Yup.  
I remember roughly a decade ago seeing pics of Jack Antonoff with Lena Dunham.  
Not knowing he was involved with that wretched song “We Are Young” by fun. (ugh…that ‘lower-case letters’ thing…compounded, in this case, by the juvenile, cutesy/quirky addition of the period (.) at the end…ugh…) I just saw him as Lena Dunham’s boyfriend. I’m not proud of this, but my visceral experience upon seeing those pics was, “ew, that’s a punchable face.”  But, in my ignorance, I just thought he was Lena Dunham’s boyfriend (as opposed to a big pop star) and didn’t think much of it and promptly forgot about him.
Fast-forward roughly a decade later, as I mentioned, I realized he was the common denominator in one of my fave current artists’ last two bland/lame/disappointing LPs. After researching this Jack Antonoff character, I realized a lot of things that caused me to conclude he sucks.  
After this conclusion, I felt a little less guilty about having the instant reaction upon seeing pictures of him of, “ew…that’s a punchable face.”