Jack Antonoff discusses Damon Albarn's "Trumpian" comments about Taylor Swift's songwriting

Last month Swift responded to a Damon Albarn interview which saw him claim that Swift "doesn’t write her own songs." Swift called out Albarn on Twitter, calling his claims "completely false" and "SO damaging." She added, "You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW."

Albarn issued an apology (sort of) soon after, saying his interview was "reduced to clickbait" and adding, "The last thing I would want to do is discredit your songwriting."

Swift was backed by frequent collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, Selling Sunset's Chrishell, Chile's president-elect Gabriel Boric and Dolly Parton, and now Antonoff has spoken about Albarn's comments on an episode of The What podcast.

"I think the Damon thing… obviously it’s completely absurd and everyone knows that," the Bleachers musician said. "You’re talking about one of the greatest songwriters of our generation who has her name as the only name on many songs. You don’t need me to explain it; it’s fact."

Antonoff continued, "The problem I had with the Damon thing beyond what he actually said was that I don’t like it when artists - the concept of being an artist is to be very tapped into a deep place. I don’t mind talking shit, like this or that, but I don’t like it when artists take almost this Trumpian approach of just making things up. I don’t care if Damon Albarn or anyone likes or doesn’t like something, but to unequivocally make a statement that isn’t true, that you actually have no idea about, and not to get to deep on it, but isn’t that kind of everything that’s wrong with our world at the moment? People talking about shit that they have no clue about?"

"It’s such a vulnerable thing to be an artist and a songwriter," he added. "You wanna go full Liam Gallagher and be like, ‘This person sucks, that person sucks,’ whatever, do you. But to just launch this sort of weird, baseless [claim] with this bravado that it’s such fact… I mean I tweeted this, but maybe before you say that, you should shut the fuck up."