“Saturday Night Live” will get a taste of New Jersey this weekend.
“SNL” announced Wednesday night that Bleachers, the bombastic pop-rock band led by singer/producer and New Jersey native Jack Antonoff, would replace rapper Roddy Ricch as Saturday night’s musical guest after Ricch was recently exposed to COVID-19, Entertainment Weekly reports.
This is Bleachers’ first “SNL” appearance, which will likely include performances of songs from the band’s third LP, the coincidentally titled “Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night,” released in July. Though Antonoff has played “SNL” before, in 2012 as a member of the pop trio Fun, of “We Are Young” fame.
Saturday is the NBC icon’s first show of the 2022, hosted by actress Ariana DeBose, who co-stars in “West Side Story” with Clifton native Rachel Zegler.
Antonoff, 37, grew up in New Milford and Woodcliff Lake before hitting the road with his indie-rock band Steel Train in the early 2000s. He then played guitar in Grammy-winning Fun from 2008 to 2015, when the band announced its indefinite hiatus.
In 2014, Bleachers dropped its first album, around which time Antonoff began producing and co-writing songs with pop A-listers like Taylor Swift, Sara Bareilles and Carly Rae Jepsen. Since then, Antonoff has become a go-to super-producer, who’s worked with Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Pink and many more.
He is nominated for Producer of the Year at the 2022 Grammy Awards, as well as for Album of the Year in association with Swift, for her chart-topping 2020 album “Evermore.”
Bobby Olivier may be reached at bolivier@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyOlivier and Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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