Bleachers’ ‘Gone Now’ Album Cover Features Jack Antonoff if He Was ‘a Dead Person’
As a fan-favorite release, Gone Now debuted with themes of death and loss, also revealed with the album cover. Here’s what Jack Antonoff said about some of the symbolism and hidden meanings behind the 2017 music release.
Bleachers and Jack Antonoff released ‘Gone Now’ in 2017
He’s gotta get himself back home soon. Following the success of Strange Desire and its Terrible Thrills, Vol. 2 cover album, Bleachers released Gone Now.
This album came with themes surrounding death, “making sense of loss,” and moving on. That’s particularly highlighted with “Everybody Lost Somebody,” “Goodbye,” and the Gone Now cover art.
Jack Antonoff appears on the cover of ‘Gone Now’
After the release of Gone Now, Antonoff took to Reddit, answering fan questions about the production. One mentioned the “I’m Ready to Move On/Mickey Mantle Reprise,” sharing that the ending reminded them of their own experience with death.
“There was a lot of feelings on Gone Now of not being here,” Antonoff wrote on Reddit. “Not in an awful way, but just thinking — what happens when it’s all gone? That’s why the cover looks like that. Basically, it’s an image of me as a dead person. Someone who’s no longer existing.”
“And the reprise is that feeling jammed into a bizarre long song,” he continued. “It’s basically three different songs I intended to end the album and then just decided to George Martin the s*** out of it and stitch them together. It’s kind of my last breath before ‘Foreign Girls,’ which is utterly an apology for being this intense.”
Complete with a jewel-covered jacket and hat, Antonoff wore this look again for the 2022 Gone Now show in Boston. He gifted it to a fan in the audience who recreated the outfit for themselves.
Are Bleachers’ ‘Strange Desire’ and ‘Gone Now’ connected?
Although it wasn’t an exact continuation of Strange Desire, Gone Now did have references to the 2014 release. That includes musical similarities between “Wild Heart” and “Dream of Mickey Mantle,” as well as reprises included on both albums.
“When I was making Gone Now, and I was looking at the back end of the album, I had a similar feeling that I was having on Strange Desire, which was this — I’ve said so much, and now I need to move on,” Antonoff said in the same Reddit thread.
“I need to close this chapter for real,” he continued. “Gone Now felt the same. I had shared so much that I just wanted to yell on top of my lungs, ‘I’m ready to move on.’”
Antonoff and Bleachers officially closed that chapter thanks to the 2021 release Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night. In 2022, the group plans to embark on the How Dare You Want Tour, making stops at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival and the All Things Go Festival.
