Interview and Photos by Jordan Edwards
It's been more than a decade since Jack & Jack began building their fanbase on Vine. Childhood best friends from Omaha, they shifted from comedy to music when their covers started getting attention from major artists.
"Rise," their 2018 collaboration with Jonas Blue, solidified them as a musical force. The track is up to more than 800 million Spotify streams and 500 million YouTube views. They followed that up with the album A Good Friend is Nice, which included many of their most popular songs.
Now in their late 20s, Jack Gilinsky and Jack Johnson are eager to show fans their full potential. Home, which came out March 1, is a move forward. Nostalgic, reflective, and sophisticated, it feels like a natural progression of the sunny dance-pop they're known for.
We met up with Jack & Jack before their spring tour to talk about the album, their creative partnership, and living life on social media.
It's been almost five years since your debut album. why has it taken so long?
Jack Gilinsky: We've felt so bad over the years for how long it's taken to not only get new music out, but even just communicate with our fans what was was holding us back from releasing something.
Jack Johnson: For those who don't know, we were with a major label, Island Records. Shortly after releasing our debut project and going on tour in 2019, our manager and A&R at the time thought it would be a good idea to make separate solo projects, put the Jack & Jack thing on a quick pause, and then come back together for project number two. But there didn't seem to be any intention of us coming back together, and they got us signed into separate deals. You hear these horror stories in the industry.
P: They Wu Tang Clanned you.
JJ. Totally. They’re like “You guys are going to flourish more on your own.” Even though the position we were in was because of our friendship and our connection in Jack & Jack. Our goal was to keep putting out Jack & Jack music and have solo stuff funnel and feed the beast, but they wanted us to go fully ghost on our socials and only post on our individual accounts. Which felt very weird, but we trusted these people at the time. And they got us signed into separate contracts where we couldn't put out music together for two or three years. And it was a big headache to get over that. But it never fucked with our relationship though. We were always close as ever.
JG: So we were completely radio silent on Jack & Jack. Couldn't even tell our fans for at least 18 months.
JJ: We felt like we were leaving our fans in the dark. It was just a bad feeling. It felt like somebody else was controlling our destiny.
JG: Something that we created in our hometown.
JJ: it felt like it was getting out of our hands, the more hands got involved.
The music industry cliché stuff.
JG: We didn't think it was real. But it was exactly how you always hear about it.
JJ: People will pry their claws into you and try to make you something you're not. But I'm also grateful for that era because it made us realize what we don't want next time around. I feel like we still have time on our side, and this time we're going to do it the correct way.
The songs on this album feel more organic, less electronic.
JJ: Yes. We really want this project to translate the best possible way live. Like "September’s Gone." I guess, "Stuttering" and "What Happened" are a little bit more pop-synthetic sounding. The album starts off with this energy, and then kind of breaks down into this acoustic section in the middle where everything is more raw and instrument-based. And then the energy comes back up. But yeah, we think this project will be the best translating project to date in terms of the live set. A lot more of the songs were conceived at a piano.
JG: I wouldn't say there's dance records, but there is more pop-leaning stuff as well. I just think it's a great mix.
To date, your biggest streaming song is "Rise" with Jonas Blue. You haven't done a lot of collaboration since then. Is there another one coming?
JJ: We're never opposed to collaboration. But if we are going to do a collaboration, we want it to be fully natural. The only two features on this project, our hometown friends, Sammy Wilk and SK8.
JG: We're not opposed to an industry collaboration at some point if we're introduced to someone and we hit it off. But we love the collaboration with Jonas Blue and "Rise." To this day, we still do shows with him. We are grateful for that collaboration, and we'd love to do more of that stuff too. We love going to festivals and listening to dance music.
JJ: That was a set-up thing, but we ended up becoming good buddies with him too. If it's set up and it's a win-win for both parties. Maybe we should make another one with Jonas, honestly.
A sequel.
JJ: Yeah a sequel, because we do like making things that's outside of what you’d typically hear from us.
Do you guys miss Vine at all?
JJ: I kind of miss the energy of just watching numbers grow initially. That I kind of miss in a sense. But I think because of the way we adapted and rolled with the punches, I don't really miss that era. I think we were a little less confident musically and as humans. We were what, 18? 17? You're still learning a lot about yourself when you're a teenager.
JG: Definitely learned a lot about the industry as well. I wouldn't trade anything to go back, because we've learned so many life lessons and industry lessons. But I miss the energy. It was a lot of fun.
Did the transition to becoming a band come gradually, or did you make a conscious decision that you needed to concentrate on music?
JJ: If you go to the early days of our Vine, you'll see that it's about 90 percent comedy and 10 percent music. It was mostly comedy with a music cover in the mix. Me beatboxing, and him singing.
JG: We couldn't ignore when those ones did great.
JJ: We did a cover of "Dive In" by Trey Songz. Trey reposted it and reached out to us, and was like “I love this.” In Nebraska, there were like no collaborators at the time. Luckily, some local producers reached out who went to the high school down the street. Big shout out to Travis and Turner Eakins, the first guys to reach out. They were just some high school kids, and they put out our first few singles through DistroKid, or TuneCore I think it was. They really helped us get over the hump. We always used to make parodies of top 40 songs back in middle school.
JG: But we never thought we could become a worldwide selling and touring musical act, because we were from Omaha, Nebraska.
JJ: But luckily, the Internet and our ability to be seen outside of our hometown helped kind of mitigate that and the belief of the people outside of our hometown is what really gave us the belief that we could do this for real.
What's the best part about being famous and the worst part about being famous?
JJ: The F word, yeah. Fame is very fickle. There of been periods in the past or we couldn't go to the mall on a Sunday at the peak of our Vine because we would get absolutely ambushed. That can get a bit annoying at times.
JG: After a four-hour flight, I don't really want to hang around and take pictures. I don't know what I look like. I just want to go home and take a shower. Something the people waiting for us don't think about.
JJ: But we always put on the poker face and met everyone we could. Even if we were having a bad day. This could be their only time to meet us. We made sure it was a positive interaction for everyone who wanted to meet us.
JG: People weren't used to Internet celebrities popping off. We were one of the first of that kind.
JJ: But now our fans are more grown-up and respectful. Now, we see people out and about and it's less of an issue. It's less of a craze now. The people who rock with us rock with us. Our goal right now is just to get the music out. We feel like the world doesn't really know Jack & Jack. We're trying to get to that level of fame or notoriety where are music touches as many people as possible.
JG: I think we try not to think about the fame part of it because that's not why we started. It was all about making quality content, and making people laugh and to entertain people.
JJ: Getting out of being hyper-fixated on numbers and bringing it back to why we started in the first place is the most important thing.
JG: That's always going to benefit everyone more than thinking about how I can become famous.
JJ: When somebody sees us in public and says that they love our music, and say that we've touched them in some way. You can't trade that feeling for anything. I'd never take it for granted. The best part of fame is hearing the stories about how you've impacted people.
For more from Jack & Jack following them on Instagram and TikTok.