Jack Antonoff says Damon Albarn’s comments about Taylor Swift were “Trumpian”
“You’re talking about one of the greatest songwriters of our generation"
By Tom Skinner
Jack Antonoff has said that Damon Albarn’s controversial comments about Taylor Swift were “almost Trumpian”.
The Blur and Gorillaz frontman faced backlash last month when he falsely claimed that Swift “doesn’t write her own songs” during an interview with The Los Angeles Times. “Co-writing is very different to writing,” Albarn added.
Responding to the criticism on Twitter, Swift wrote: “@DamonAlbarn I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this. I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.
“PS I wrote this tweet all by myself in case you were wondering.”
At the time, Swift’s frequent collaborator Antonoff – who worked on 2020’s ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’ – said: “I’ve never met Damon Albarn and he’s never been to my studio but apparently he knows more than the rest of us about all those songs Taylor writes and brings in. Herb.
“If you were there … cool … go off. If not … maybe …. shut the fuck up?”
Many of Swift’s fans and fellow musicians jumped to her defence. Albarn subsequently backtracked and apologised “unreservedly and unconditionally”, claiming that his words had been “reduced to clickbait”.
During a recent appearance on Consequence‘s ‘The What’ podcast, Antonoff said of Albarn’s inaccurate claim about Swift’s writing process: “Obviously, it’s completely absurd and everyone knows that.
“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 then made a comparison between Albarn and former US President Donald Trump. “I don’t like it when artists take almost this Trumpian approach of just making things up,” he said.
“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… 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?”
He continued: “You wanna go full Liam Gallagher and be like, ‘This person sucks, that person sucks’? Whatever, do you. But to launch this weird, baseless [claim] with this bravado that it’s fact… maybe before you say that, you should shut the fuck up.”
Albarn addressed the backlash during a solo show in LA, which took place the day after the Los Angeles Times interview in question was published. He told the crowd that the comments had “cast me into the social media abyss” (via Spin).
“You can judge for yourself,” he said. “I think I’m becoming old fashioned.”
Damon Albarn was performing in support of his most recent solo album, ‘The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows’, which came out last November.
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is set to appear as a guest on a new version of Ed Sheeran’s track ‘The Joker And The Queen’, which arrives tomorrow (February 11).