Are You a Swifty?

@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.”

ROTFLMFAO!!

Threads that warn our fellow Forum members about fraudulent websites and threads that say negative things about companies that spend big advertising dollars with Audiogon get SHUT DOWN BY THE MOD CZARS....yet a thread about a less than mediocre talent whose rich Hedge Fund daddy greased the wheels of a label and a staff of hundreds "created" an auto-tuned, politically geared media sensation complete with the full backing of the NFL, the DNC, Ticketmaster, and every other think wrong with music today.....and the discussion about the Cult of Swifty goes on for almost 4 pages on this site.

What a Country!!  😂🤣🤑🤑🤢🤮