Jack Antonoff is a producer who’s name should be familiar to all of us at this point. Apart from his own two bands, fun. and Bleachers, he has worked with the 1975, Taylor Swift, Florence and the Machine, and Lorde. Apart from all these artists all having a distinct indie pop or pop sound, all of Antonoff’s productions have certain elements that make the tracks sounds like they could be from an 80’s coming of age soundtrack. Antonoff himself describes his music as “a little bit John Hughes”.
The first of these elements is Antonoff’s use of a synthesizer. This is best reflected in his most recent production, “Being Funny In A Foreign Language” by the 1975. Throughout this album, Antonoff combines use of a synthesizer with slow bass to appeal to his John Hughes goal. Another element of 80’s pop can be seen in this album as well: vocal reverb. This can be best seen in the bridge in “About You”, where the vocals are distorted to achieve this 80’s sound.
Antonoff often even goes far enough to use samples from iconic 80’s tracks, as seen in his production of Lorde’s “Hard Feelings/Loveless”. Antonoff samples Phil Collin’s iconic drum solo from “In the Air Tonight”. Sampled drums are also seen in Bleacher’s track “Don’t Take The Money”, in which the percussion is sampled from Queen’s “Radio Ga-Ga”.
Overall, using these elements, Antonoff successfully puts a modern spin on 80’s pop.