Catching Up with Jack and Jack

PopEntertainment

2 days ago

6 min read

Updated: 6 minutes ago

Jack and Jack

Catching Up with Jack and Jack

by Emma Fox

Childhood best friends from Omaha, Nebraska, Jack Johnson and Jack Gilinsky have spent more than a decade turning their love for music and internet fame into a full-fledged music career. Now, fully independent after stepping away from the major label system, the duo has never been stronger. Their two-sided album, SYN/ANTI, is out October 16th, and it’s the result of two years of nonstop work.

It had been a couple of years since we last caught up with our old friends, so we were thrilled to get back with them over a Zoom chat to talk about how the album came together, how fatherhood has shaped Jack G’s songwriting, their fan-favorite Symbiosis Vault, and the upcoming SYN/ANTI Tour, which kicks off in Europe this November!

Twelve years into their career, the guys are still pinching themselves. “We’re just grateful in general in life, you know, we get to do this for a living,” Jack Gilinsky said. “We’ve been doing it for 12 years, and to be doing it with my best friend... we get to go to Europe and that’s our job. We get to go perform songs for hundreds of people, thousands of people around the world. We get to create music and release music, and it’s pretty awesome. So we’re loving life.”

For the guys, being independent has made this album cycle feel especially personal. “It’s awesome having the entire rollout being like our baby,” Johnson shared. “We are truly making the decisions. It’s just me, G, and our manager, Rob, putting our heads together every week, talking in the group chat every day and figuring out how we want to go about it.”

The project first took shape in December 2024 at a writing camp in Big Bear, under a different title: Symbiosis. “We’ve always talked about how G is the yin to my yang, or vice versa,” Johnson explained. “But we can’t call an album Yin and Yang. It just feels too on the nose. So we’re like, what’s a word that encapsulates Jack & Jack, and how we just fill in the gaps of each other?”

After releasing eight songs in 2025, the duo decided to lean even further into that duality, splitting the project into a light side and a dark side. “A lot of stuff we make is very fun, uplifting, positive, love songs, maybe more major chords,” Johnson said. “Then a lot of stuff we make on the flip side can be very melancholy or introspective. It gets you in your feels more.”

The new title comes from two Greek prefixes: “syn,” meaning with or together, and “anti,” meaning against or opposed to. The songs themselves came from three secluded writing camps with a small, trusted circle of collaborators, a change from their usual routine.

“I never want to miss putting my daughter to bed,” Jack Gilinsky said. “Come, let’s say, 4:30, it’s like ‘Okay, we only have an hour and a half left. Where are we with this record?’ And it clouds up the creative process.”

At the writing camps, that pressure disappeared. With family around, the guys were free to chase that inspiration whenever it struck.

“If we get hungry, we just go into the kitchen and eat food,” he laughed. “Then in the middle of our bite, ‘Oh wait, hold on, I want to check this ad-lib real quick.’ We’ll run back into the studio. That’s why these writing camps have been so productive for us, and allowed us to make, I think, the best music we’ve ever made.”

While fans have been living with each single for a couple weeks at a time, the guys made sure to save a few surprises for release day. “There’s going to be three songs on either side that no one had ever heard,” Gilinsky shared. “For those who are consistently listening to our music, they’ll have three brand new songs to sink their teeth into.”

The album covers a lot of emotional ground, from a song about grief and losing a loved one, to what Johnson describes as their own version of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me.” Gilinsky is especially excited for fans to hear “Tell Me You Love Me,” a song about waiting for those three words to be said for the first time.

“We describe this whole project as a coming-of-age project,” Gilinsky said. “From top to bottom, you’ll get a sense of who we are as people, and what we’ve been through, and where we’re going.”

That theme comes full circle on the album’s closing track, “Listen Up, Kid.”

“It’s me talking to my younger self through different stages of my life, and then G’s singing the hook,” Johnson said. “That one just started as, I wrote it on the piano, so that one’s a very personal one to me.”

For Jack G, the most personal moment is “Bulletproof,” which he wrote for his daughter.

“Could you imagine if me and Johnson put a song like ‘Bulletproof’ out in 2019? People would be like, ‘What?’” Jack G laughed. “Sometimes I have those moments where I’m like, ‘This is crazy. I have a song about my daughter.’ And then I’m like, ‘I have a daughter.’ She’s almost four. Life is truly wild.”

These days, Jack Gilinsky isn’t writing songs about nightlife and going out. (“Unless I make him,” Johnson joked.) But when he does step back into that younger mindset, he treats it as a fun creative challenge.

“It’s almost like writing a script, and then you’re performing as an actor in your song. But I think it’s affected all of my processes in life positively, not just the music making.”

In terms of fanbases, Jack & Jack have always had one of the most dedicated ones out there, and this rollout has given them a whole new way to connect.

“At the end of the day, we owe everything to our fans that have stuck by our sides through thick and thin,” Johnson said. “We had a very long hiatus coming out of the major label system. They truly have been our rock. They never abandoned us when a lot of people did.”

For each single, fans could order a collectible photo card through the Symbiosis Vault. Every card ships worldwide and comes at different rarity levels, from Jack & Jack cards to solo J and G cards, with signed polaroids tucked into some lucky envelopes. Each one has an NFC chip, so scanning it unlocks a digital version of the card and an early listen to the upcoming song. There’s even a leaderboard, with prizes and raffles for the top collectors, and every drop has sold out within 48 hours.

The fun doesn’t stop online, either. Fans are encouraged to bring their cards on tour to trade with each other, and the guys will be selling five-card booster packs at the shows.

“It’s like pulling Pokémon cards out of a pack,” Johnson said. “Just seeing them freak out when they get a signed polaroid tucked behind their card, it makes my heart so happy.”

At the heart of SYN/ANTI is rediscovery, and making the album helped the guys realize that as artists, they don’t just need to pick one lane.

“I get bored when an artist becomes a one-trick, one-sound pony,” Johnson said. “I think we really pride ourselves in being able to go from an acoustic ballad to a song like ‘Wrong Mine,’ that’s a very in-your-face synth-pop song with rapping on it.”

For Jack G, it answered a question that had been on his mind for years. After the 2019 release of A Good Friend Is Nice, a close friend told the duo it sounded like they were still trying to find their sound.

“It played in my head for years and years,” G admitted. “It’s like in this moment, I’m just realizing, truly our sound is my voice and Johnson’s voice. Why would we not make what we love?”

“Not having a sound almost is our sound,” Johnson agreed. “Our tones, his voice and my voice, are the connective tissue between everything. Music making and music consumption is supposed to be fun.”

This November, Jack & Jack head to Europe for the SYN/ANTI Tour, before bringing it to the U.S. in early 2027.

After more than a decade on the road together, Jack Gilinsky says the moments he looks forward to the most are the ones that make everything stand still. “I believe in this music. I believe it’ll take us to new heights,” he added. “But even if it doesn’t, I love what we’re doing.”

With SYN/ANTI out in the world soon, and a brand-new tour on the horizon, Jack & Jack are stepping into their most authentic era yet.