Former 'Girls' co-stars Allison Williams and Ebon Moss-Bachrach reveal some of their cringey songs were Kelly Clarkson's 'Discards'

Way back before his shelves were filled with Grammy Awards for his work with Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and St. Vincent, Jack Antonoff was better known as this guy from fun., or maybe the one who sang on Steel Train.

But in a new video for Vanity fair to which ex Girls co-starring Allison Williams (M3GAN) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The bear) reunite after seven years to revisit the show that helped make them both stars, the pair also reveal that some of the spooky songs they belted out together as their characters, Marnie and Desi, were actually written by Antonoff .

And, they noted, the Bleachers singer — who dated the show's star and creator Lena Dunham during the HBO series' five-year run — originally wrote some of it for a major pop star who turned down the pieces. The volatile on-screen couple often played music together on screen as they battled through a tumultuous courtship and brief marriage, with Moss-Bachrah saying VF that she only recently learned that most of their duets were “just Kelly Clarkson knock-offs.”

“I love that song,” Moss-Bacharach said of “Breathless,” which Antonoff reportedly wrote for Clarkson, according to Williams. “It's a great song, he should have done it! But we got it, as a result,” Williams added of the track she performed in the season four premiere that featured Marnie's lyrics, “I don't wantna dream if dreamin' is without you/ I don't want to run unless I'm running to you, everything I do is about you.”

Whether you disliked Marnie or actively despised her, Williams said she actually thought many of the pair's songs “were really beautiful,” though she agreed that “the lyrics are what made them cringe.” She liked so many of them, but her favorite was “Oaxaca,” Marnie-Desi's latest song, which, she notes again, has lyrics that are “so horrible” that she didn't want to repeat them out loud. Moss-Bachrach, however, insisted on doing so. For example: “Shaking my maracas, doing what you do/ Yeah, you'll find me in a dark bar/ Where there's no gringos.”

“Marnie singing the word 'gringo' should be illegal. It shouldn't have been allowed to happen to me,” Williams laughed, noting that the actors were often actually acting on screen, which was so “traumatizing.”

“What was cool about it being built in, was that they were supposed to be maybe not that great,” Moss-Bachrach said of the creative release valve that allowed them to lean into cracking lyrics that she described as often “inept” and “embarrassing.” in the best case. “No one had very high expectations, so it felt very safe for me to just do it.” Williams said this twist made it difficult for them to know how good they should try to be, with Moss-Bachrach claiming he “tried as hard as I could try”.

To put this into perspective, Moss-Bachrach said that the lyrics were often so bad, “Leonard Cohen could sing them and it would still be crap.” At press time it did not appear that Antonoff had responded to the video.

Speaking of frustration, Williams mentioned the ultimate pinnacle of Marnie's moment, when her character sang a cover of Kanye West's “Stronger” as a torch ballad at a party to the surprise of the entire room, including her friends. “It was quiet, except for my voice,” she said of the ninth episode from season two. “There's no more vulnerable experience than a room full of backgrounds, silent, and just your little voice in the room echoing against nothing else, singing 'I'll be your white Kate Moss tonight,'” Williams said.

Watch Williams and Moss-Bachrach tear theirs down Girls musical chemistry below (music discussion begins at 1:20).