O ne day in 2013, Jack Antonoff was sitting in a car in Los Angeles with his friend Hayley Williams when he decided to play her a new song. Back then, Antonoff was best known as a member of the band Fun., and he hoped to release the track, “I Wanna Get Better,” as the first single for a new solo project, Bleachers. The song — a “fucking life story in three minutes,” as Antonoff has called it — defiantly addressed a series of personal traumas that shaped his identity. Getting Williams’ seal of approval was a big deal.

“It was one of the first songs that I really loved that spoke to mental health in the way that it did,” Williams recalls. “I needed to say [what the song said], but someone else had to say it for me, in a way.” As she relates the memory, she and Antonoff are sitting a

See Full Page