Jack Antonoff

I've been touring through Texas since I was 15, on my first tour ever.

Headlining can be sort of solitary - you're sort of on your own out there, and you start to feel for a change.

My parents had a house on the Jersey shore - I grew up right there, going down there every summer and living there. It is home for me.

I need a hobby, and I don't want it to be basketball. I want it to be music. So to get away from music, I do other music.

I feel like I missed a whole period of my childhood because I had a bunch of stressful things happen to me when I was like 17, 18, when people usually feel the most free in life, like going to college and like anything is possible.

You get to a point where everything is so important. One day you have 'Letterman,' and the next day you're at the MTV Movie Awards, and the next day you have a sold-out show for over 15,000 people. You can't cancel anything, because it's just too much to let everyone down, which is an interesting thing about being in a bigger band.

Singles, whatever. But selling a million albums feels like an impossible thing to do.

I've gone down to the Jersey Shore every summer since I was born. It's like a second home, and Asbury Park is like the capital - it's the center of all of it. Musically, it's incredible.

In this business, it's important to constantly do things that you don't know how to do. I love touring and making records, but I've learned how to do that, so sometimes you just have to dive in and try it.

There was this darkness about being from New Jersey.

Sometimes it's really quick, and sometimes it's really long. There's no formula for writing songs.

Bleachers comes from a different place. It's personal. It's just me putting myself out there as myself. It's very intense.

If you're in a conversation with me, the last thing I'll probably say when I'm walking away is, 'Thank you and sorry.'

It just seems like the most fun thing in the world. I've never met people who have kids who haven't looked me in the eye and been like, 'It's the greatest thing that's ever happened.'

When I was growing up, it was a lot of punk and hardcore music going on in legion halls and firehouses, and we'd play those shows, and it was very Jersey. It was very suburban, and there's just a great pride there.

When you're in a band, it's like everyone's the CEO, and anyone could destroy it at any moment.

There's nothing more adult than being ripped away from friends and family, you know? Having to manage a life when you're not fully there, manage a life when you don't make a lot of money. It's very adult.

I want to be able to do work where I think it's very forward, but I also want it to exist in a big way and have an effect on a lot of people.

When I started playing in bands, we had to be apologetic for what we did. We had to be apologetic because the mainstream was so bad.

I've worked so hard for so long, and everyone's reaction has made me feel like... almost like they trust me, which is just a wonderful feeling. It pushes me to write things better and better.