Jack & Jack

Omaha, kindergarten, and a camera

Jack Edward Johnson and Jack Finnegan Gilinsky met on their first day of kindergarten in Omaha, Nebraska, having turned up in the same shirt. Johnson was born on 24 March 1996, Gilinsky on 10 September 1996, and the two were making videos together long before either could drive: a YouTube channel called MoterFalconQuagmire, started in 2007, carried parodies and lip-sync clips to audiences in the hundreds before high school pulled their attention elsewhere. They graduated from Westside High School in 2014, by which point the side project had become the job.

Vine did that. Johnson began posting in July 2013 and Gilinsky joined him on a shared account; a clip called 'Nerd Vandals' put 25,000 followers on it in short order. By early 2015 the account had passed five million followers and sat inside the twenty most-followed on the platform, which in that period came with a touring circuit of its own — the Magcon package shows, where internet-famous teenagers filled rooms on the strength of six-second videos. The music started as an extension of that. 'Distance', their first original song, arrived in January 2014.

Calibraska to Island Records

The audience converted. By February 2015 the duo had sold a million singles on iTunes, and the Calibraska EP, released on 24 July 2015, went to number one on the US iTunes chart. Their first show outside America was at Wembley Arena in London on 21 March 2015, an unusual place to make an international debut for an act with no album to its name.

A major label followed in early 2017, when they signed to Island Records. Their biggest chart result was borrowed: Jonas Blue's 'Rise', which featured both of them, reached number three on the UK singles chart. Under their own name the figures were smaller — 'Wild Life' peaked at 87 on the Billboard Hot 100 — and the debut album, A Good Friend Is Nice, did not appear until 25 January 2019, five years after that first single.

The hiatus, and the long way back

On 17 April 2020 Gilinsky announced a hiatus, releasing the solo single 'My Love' with Don Toliver. Johnson went out under the name JVCKJ with 'You Lie' on 4 September 2020 and an EP, Pastel: The Early Days, on 4 December. Neither solo run rebuilt what the pair had together. They reunited in 2022 with 'Runaway' and 'Right Here With You', this time without a major label behind them.

Gilinsky has described the second attempt as better informed rather than easier, saying the two are now far better equipped to navigate the industry than they were as teenagers, and that much of the comeback has meant winning back followers lost during the years away. He credits the friendship for the writing itself: when he hits a block, Johnson's ideas start arriving, and the two trade off. Johnson's hook for 'September's Gone' came out of September 2021, using the end of the month as a figure for a hometown relationship ending when one person leaves for the west coast. Elton John's piano playing and Anderson.Paak come up as reference points; Timbaland has been in the room.

Symbiosis becomes SYN/ANTI

The comeback took its name early. 'Losing You' arrived on 28 February 2025 as the first trail for an album then titled Symbiosis, and a 17-date European tour ran from 21 March to 14 April 2025 through Ireland, the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, the Benelux countries, Switzerland, Italy, France and Spain, with London on 25 March. Autumn brought a home-town show at the Slowdown in Omaha on 22 October 2025, then a South American leg in December: Curitiba on the 4th, São Paulo on the 6th, Rio de Janeiro on the 7th, Buenos Aires on the 9th and Mexico City on the 11th.

The record itself changed shape. Rather than reconcile the pop-rap they built their following on with the slower, soul-leaning material they had drifted towards, they stopped trying and split the thing in two. SYN/ANTI, released on 16 October 2026, runs 24 songs across two halves — SYN for the brighter pop-rap, ANTI for the moodier R&B — with the titles taken from the Greek for 'together' and 'against'. A physical-only edition combining both sides, SYMBIOSIS, followed on 19 October, sold alongside NFC-chipped trading cards tied to an app of the same name. Singles ran ahead of it: 'BULLETPROOF' on 8 September 2026, then 'Serotonin Pools' and 'All On You'.

It was not made in a studio. The duo say the album came out of three multi-week writing and recording camps in Southern California, in rented houses with a small circle of trusted co-writers and producers, and that nobody guests on it. Johnson's summary — the most authentic versions of themselves they have been, hands-on and DIY, like the early days — describes the working method as much as the result. Gilinsky frames the return to independence as going back to doing it because they enjoy it.

Where they stand, late October 2026

The album is a fortnight old and the touring is the next move. Tickets for a 29-date American run went on sale at 10am local time on 23 October 2026. That tour opens on 2 March 2027 at the Voodoo Room inside the House of Blues in San Diego and closes on 15 April 2027 at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles, taking in Sony Hall in New York, the Bottom Lounge in Chicago and the Bottleneck in Lawrence, Kansas. There are no arenas or amphitheatres on it; the rooms are clubs and small theatres, deliberately chosen.

Europe comes first, and starts within the week: the Luxor in Cologne on 5 November, Kavka Oudaan in Antwerp on the 6th, Bahnhof Pauli in Hamburg on the 8th, the Melkweg in Amsterdam on the 10th, La Bellevilloise in Paris on the 11th, Mouco in Porto on the 14th, then Madrid on the 15th and Barcelona on the 16th, before the British dates — New Century in Manchester on the 20th, Mama Roux's in Birmingham on the 21st and Dingwalls in London on the 22nd.

Press on the new material has been narrow and favourable rather than broad. Melodic Magazine heard 'All On You' as the radio pop the audience knows with an R&B undercurrent running beneath it, built on soft percussion and gaps in the guitar line, and read the two albums together as a more grown-up phase than the Vine-era records. There is no sign yet of the kind of crossover numbers 'Rise' produced in 2017, and the venue sizes reflect that honestly.

What the show has been doing

The 2025 shows were long for the size of room and heavy on the back catalogue. Omaha on 22 October 2025 ran from 9pm to 10.30pm across 19 numbers, opening with 'Fire' and working through 'Lotta Love', 'No One Compares to You' and 'Role Model' before a slower middle of 'Stuttering', 'Baby Blue', 'Closure' and 'Stay With Me', an acoustic 'Tides', Justin Bieber's 'YUKON' and an acoustic 'Rise'. The archive then arrives all at once in a medley that compresses fifteen songs — 'Promise Me', 'Tension', 'California', 'Groove', 'Cold Hearted' and the rest — into a single sequence, which is how a decade of singles fits into ninety minutes. The last stretch was 'Wild Life', 'Our Song', 'Appetite' with Edwin Honoret, 'Hurt People', 'Like That (Jack's Version)' with SK8, and '2 Cigarettes'.

The South American dates in December 2025 were tighter: 13 songs in Buenos Aires on the 9th, 8.45pm to 10.10pm, and the same count in Curitiba on the 4th between 8.05pm and 9.35pm. No support act has been announced for any of the November 2026 European dates, and guests have tended to be friends from the same circuit rather than billed openers.