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March 31: “We Are Young”

lawrencebush
March 30, 2015

1035x773-20140218-jack-x1800-1392761095Jack Antonoff, lead guitarist for the indie band fun., whose 2012 hit single, “We Are Young,” hijacked the radio as a smash hit for weeks after it was covered on the television show Glee, was born in Bergenfield, New Jersey on this date in 1984. Antonoff spent his elementary school days at a Solomon Schechter day school. He became a rocker in his teen years and in 2002 formed the band Steel Train, for which he was lead singer. Six years later he helped form fun., which released its debut album, Aim and Ignite, in 2009. In 2014 he began a solo music project called Bleachers, and released an album, Strange Desires, later that year. Among the tunes he has written or co-written are “Sight of the Sun,” featured on Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls (Dunham and Antonoff are a romantic pair), “Brave,” a song about sexual expression and self-acceptance that has become a contemporary GLBTQ anthem (as well as an advertising song for Microsoft), and “Sweeter than Fiction,” a song he wrote with Taylor Swift, which was selected for a Golden Globe nomination. To see fun. playing “We Are Young,” look below.

“To get away from music, I do other music. If I’m producing someone’s song or writing with someone else, then doing a Bleachers song or a fun. song is an escape and it keeps me creative and it keeps me locked into what I want to do. If something’s making me crazy, I need to go somewhere else and I don’t want that thing to be yoga.” —Jack Antonoff