“Anyone could relate to the terrible sadness and pain, but there’s a great power to it also. It’s actually been really beautiful,” the Grammy winner explained. “I mean, for people to come together, to know what I write a song about, to know how that must feel for me now, to know what that song means to you as an audience member, to just hold it all and sort of celebrate.”
And while Antonoff—who wed Qualley in 2023—shared that he can’t “rewrite the past,” he also has no intentions of erasing it.
“I have no shame about the things I’ve said,” he admitted. “My life has been dedicated to making it impossible for me to rewrite the past because I’m standing there, singing about how I felt during the good times, so when the bad times hit I can’t look myself in the mirror and pretend that those times didn’t exist. I would rather live through something publicly than even escape it privately.”