“Rollercoaster” by Bleachers

"Rollercoaster" was the third single from Strange Desire, the 2014 debut from Bleachers, and Jack Antonoff has never been shy about where it came from: Bruce Springsteen, his fellow New Jersey native, whose "Dancing in the Dark" he set out to remake in his own modern image. The riff turned up while he was fooling around on a synthesizer in his home studio in New Jersey.

Antonoff wrote it with John Hill and produced it with Hill and Greg Kurstin, and he plays almost everything himself: drums, bass, guitar and keyboards, plus the lead vocal, with Kurstin adding electric guitar and synth. It sounds like a joyride, but Antonoff calls it a sad song. For the Richard Shepard video he pitched the band playing on the roof of a van, without quite thinking through how dangerous that would be.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.