Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Jack Antonoff Takes a Break From Fun. For Solo Record —  With Yoko Ono

Jack Antonoff, lead guitarist in Fun. and boyfriend of Lena Dunham, has taken a short break from his Grammy Award-winning band to write and record a solo album. The record, entitled “Strange Desire,” was released in July and features Yoko Ono. Dunham directed the music video for the album’s first single, “I Wanna Get Better.”

In an interview with the New York Daily News, Antonoff explains that he found writing music on his own to be interesting and totally “aesthetically different” than the process of writing with Fun. Most notably, Antonoff sings on his solo record, something he has not done since he fronted his first band Steel Train.

He described working with Yoko Ono as predictably bizarre.

“She went in and started screaming and grunting and making album noises,” Antonoff said. “I basically took this 20-minute file of her doing all this stuff, got in bed and started cutting it all up.”

Despite all this, Fun. fans should not be worried – the band is gearing up to write and record a new album.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.