In the words of his longtime friend and collaborator Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff can do it with a broken heart. Following his split from Margaret Qualley, the Bleachers frontman opened up to The Guardian in an interview published Sunday (Oct. 25) about his plans to keep performing songs about his ex, no matter how painful they are to sing.
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When asked about whether recent events in his personal life have tempted him to switch up the setlist on his ongoing Bleachers Forever Tour, Antonoff began, “Oh, I can imagine what you’re going to say: It’s bizarre.”
“I obviously was really worried about this specific thing,” he continued candidly. “I sat long and hard with it and thought: ‘If I change the setlist …,’ and in my gut there was a unanimous jury that said, ‘No, this is the deal.’ The deal I’ve made with my audience is that I’m going to tell you honestly how I feel and I’m going to risk at any moment having to stand behind it for f–king ever.”
The chart-topping producer added that “it’s actually been really beautiful” to perform songs about his past relationship to his fans, knowing that they’re aware of his change in circumstances. “For people to come together, to know what I write a song about, to know how that must feel for me now, to know what that song means to you as an audience member, to just hold it all and sort of celebrate … I would rather live through something publicly than even escape it privately.”
It was first reported in July that Antonoff and Qualley had split after about three years of marriage. Prior to tying the knot in New Jersey with a number of celebrities (Swift included) in attendance, they’d dated for about a year before reportedly getting engaged in the first half of 2022.
At press time, it seems that neither Antonoff nor the Substance star have filed to legally end their marriage. “There was no infidelity or anything outside of respect and partnership in this relationship,” a rep for Qualley told E! News following news of their separation, adding the pair still “have deep love and care for one another.”
Antonoff did not name specific songs to The Guardian, but tracks such as “You and Forever” — the music video for which starred Qualley — and “Tiny Moves” are likely to have taken on a new meaning for the bandleader as he performs them at Bleachers shows. He previously joked with fans at a show in Los Angeles in September, telling a fan who’d requested 2017 love song “Let’s Get Married,” “Read the news, brother.”
“I don’t give a f–k any more,” Antonoff added in the new interview of online commentary, on his relationship or otherwise. “It’s like, the very act of engaging negatively on the internet is inarguably such a f–king low-vibrational joke, and I think artists for too long over the past decade have read into it and there’s less than nothing there.”