It’s been a big day for… Listening to...

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It’s been a big day for… Listening to...

Jack Antonoff

The Internet Has Gone Full True Detective To Try And Work Out The Deal With Alleged Non-Couple Lorde And Jack Antonoff

Reports from her Brooklyn show suggest sexual tension that was palpable from the nosebleed seats.

So the internet – by which I mean Pop Stan Twitter and a bunch of grown entertainment writers who have managed to successfully justify our their obsessions with 20-year-old recording artists by getting jobs writing about them – is furiously trying to work out whether Lorde and Jack Antonoff are dating, even though they have both denied they are.

Antonoff, who was a key co-writer and producer on Lorde’s 2017 album Melodrama, sprinted over to her Barclays Centre show in Brooklyn last night, immediately after his set supporting Pink at Madison Square Garden, and joined her onstage.

The two faced each other, sitting cross-legged on the stage, and peppered their banter with adorable, intimate details about their time in NYC making the album together. He roasts her for eating bodega sushi and walking barefoot on the streets! He played her St Vincent’s song ‘New York’, which he co-wrote, for the first time in the city, which doesn’t sound like much when I write it out but they made it sound significant!

Then she covered it with Jack on acoustic guitar, and it was… a lot.

“Isn’t this the weirdest feeling?” she said to him afterwards, gesturing at the sold-out crowd of 19,000, as though the eye-sex they’d just on the stage was, like, a total accident.

“We were so alone for so long,” added Antonoff, because the image of them hanging out ALONE for SO LONG definitely isn’t going to fuel any speculation.

She touched him a lot – tweaking his cap, patting his leg, kind of headbutting his shoulder a bit – and then was just like, “Oh hey, want to sit next to me while I sing this next super emotionally intense song?” and he was all “Oh I’ll just play it on the piano for you over here” and that song (‘Liability’) went perfectly even though they hadn’t planned or rehearsed, because their chemistry is just that good. Their professional, professional chemistry.

Also, Lorde changed the last line from “they’re gonna watch me disappear into the sun” to “watch us disappear”.

And this is just what you can see on that one video. Here are two writers from NY Magazine’s The Cut who were actually there, theorising wildly in a most irresponsible fashion:

Mariah Smith: Jack, who is chewing gum, and looks like a kid in a candy store seeing “Ella.” The way he called her “Ella” so many times was a hate crime.
Lindsey Weber: I know, she was like,  “YOU’RE CHEWING GUM?” And he was like, “Babe.” (He didn’t say that, but could you hear him saying that?)
Mariah Smith: He might as well have!
Lindsey Weber: They were FULL-ON FLIRTING for an arena of people! People even reported some knee-stroking.
Mariah Smith: The minute Jack came out, Lorde was practically spread-eagle in his lap.
…
Mariah Smith: There’s no way they aren’t effing. …
Lindsey Weber: I don’t know. After seeing this I was more convinced that she was in love with him but her feelings aren’t… reciprocated.
Mariah Smith: REALLY.
Lindsey Weber: Or! They kissed once or twice and never again.

And here are some tweets:

https://twitter.com/bobbyfinger/status/981712974283976704

On the one hand, they have a genuinely wonderful and effective creative relationship, and seem to be very close whether they’re boning or not, and the twelve-year age gap is a bit borderline.

More than any of that, Antonoff kind of had a point when he denied the dating rumours in February by calling it “dumb heteronormative gossip”, because men and women can absolutely just be friends and be emotionally intimate and hug each other and create things together and still manage not to have sex with each other.

On the other hand, I 100% want to believe that they are in love and will get married and make a million perfect album-babies together. And given the tragic demise of the Dewan-Tatums, I think we’re all extremely ready to get very emotionally invested in a possible romantic relationship between two people we do not know personally.