Q&A: Q&A: Lucy Frost’s Vitamins Is The Prescription That Counteracts Negative Effects Of Addictive Relationship Withdrawal

MusicQ&A

Aug 19

INTERVIEW

RELATIONSHIPS ARE THE PSYCHEDELLIC DRUG TRIP THAT NOBODY TALKS ABOUT—That’s the idea being explored in Lucy Frost’s debut indie pop-rock album, Vitamins.

Relationships can be messy and imperfect, which is exactly the sound Frost captured in the production of Vitamins. With an organic live band as a backing track, it’s what you hear in your head when you know a relationship is about to crash and burn, but you want to be along for the ride anyway. From the Irish pubs in Boston to the music studios in LA, Frost’s music has undergone some significant changes over time, all resulting in the chaotically beautiful mosaic of a sonic experience on Vitamins.

The writing process started out as a catharsis and musical identity exploration, but each song planted a seed for what would eventually become Vitamins: a series of tracks that unearth their own ideas of how relationships can act a lot like a drug. Each track is embedded with raw, unfiltered thoughts and a bit of punk-rock bitterness. The album tells a story of addiction, withdrawal and extreme highs and lows—all culminating in a cohesive narrative about heartbreak to healing.

Each song on Vitamins is a pill meant to cure the sickness of heartbreak. Throughout the creation of this album, Frost found herself slowly turning a story of healing what was broken into a story of a person completely reborn. Frost reminds us that growth isn’t only happening once you’ve reached a destination. It’s a never ending process that is happening every day. Knowing that you are on the journey is more than enough.

LUNA: Can you tell me a little bit about how you got into music? Was it something you always wanted to do or is it something you discovered over time?

FROST: I've always played music. I started playing piano super young. My sister was gifted a keyboard for her birthday when she was [in] first or third grade or something, and I'm two years younger than her. She played it once, and I've played it every day. I think, because of that, I grew into playing what I wanted to play. I always just liked making things up, and I had a good ear. I fell in love with music that way—listening to different songs and movie scores and wanting to figure them out by myself.

Then eventually, I was in bands and I had lessons and all that. I ended up going to Berklee College of Music for film composition. I totally loved to write and sing and play guitar, but I also was so focused on composing for film and TV I was doing a lot of different things. [I] went to LA, was doing a lot of film editing or music editing for trailers, and then I started getting put into sessions like through connections I had as a writer. I've been doing this [the] past couple years, writing for different artists and producing for different people. It's been awesome to do all this because I just feel like I'm meeting so many people and collaborators.

I met the producers I work with today and like did Vitamins on and I just fucking love them. They're awesome. I think through all of this, I've realized what I really want and what I truly love at the end of the day is my own songs and creating that world. All I really want to be doing is going on tour with that. So this past year, writing this album and doing all this has just been such a gift in a way of pushing myself in different places.

LUNA: I did see that you went to college for musical score. I thought that was interesting that you eventually decided to transition over to that. Was it because you really wanted your own voice and to do your own thing?

FROST: Yeah, I remember taking a poetry class in high school or something and doing it because I loved songwriting and was obsessed with Bob Dylan and was like, "This will be really fun.” I've always written and I've always loved making songs as much as I've loved composing. I think my ability to write stories and tell stories has been developing. I think now I'm so in love with storytelling and writing lyrics, and I still will totally do freelance composing for a few film friends. But yeah, I'll always do everything.

LUNA: You're from Boston, which has such a wide variety of musical genres. Do you think the music scene there had any impact on your artistic identity now?

FROST: I'm sure it did in different ways. It comes from my family, I'd say. I would go see Dropkick Murphys with my dad, and that was just an Irish band that's screaming in your face. Everyone's drunk, and I think I love that experience. “Video Games,” one of the songs on Vitamins, is a bar song. I always joke that it's kind of like a bar song, and I think that it totally comes from that little Irish part of me that always hung out at a pub. I also think it's not that much of a music scene, so it's easy to find the small artists or find these experiences that you might not get in LA.

LUNA: Do you think that moving to LA changed your taste in music or what you wanted to do in music?

FROST: It's definitely opened my eyes to working with it because I've worked with so many different artists there, and people I never thought I would work with. It's a lot of very pop centered people and artists, and I've never been truly 100 percent pop, and I think that was a very LA thing. LA is just huge, and I've noticed my songs shifting. You move to a new city and you gain all these experiences and you change over time and I definitely noticed my music changing throughout that, and I love it now because I think I have such a better sense of self after that.

LUNA: Congrats on the release of Vitamins. How did you first come up with the album's concept that each song is its own daily vitamin designed to heal listeners in a way?

FROST: I never went into it being like, “I'm gonna write an album, and this is my theme.” I started with a few of these songs, like “Morphine” and “Pushing Daisies” and “Prescription.” They're talking about drugs and all this stuff, and I was like, well, this is a common theme I'm going with. I don't do drugs, but I can relate to a lot of those feelings of addiction and withdrawal and feeling really lost and confused and torn. There's just so much that can be pulled apart in that broad category. I just started realizing through all these songs [that] bad relationships form bad habits, and then it's just a true loss of self. This is my first album I've ever made, so it was just super fun in those early stages to be like, “oh my god, this song can go into this song.” It’s really cool.

LUNA: The concept of “Shit Kicker,” seeing all those red flags and deciding to go for it anyway, I think that would be relatable to a lot of people. When you were first writing these songs, did you think about how that would be relatable? And people would find solace in that, with you being so vulnerable?

FROST: I think so. I've been in so many sessions as a writer where I'll work with an artist that comes in and they're like, "I want to talk about this shitty ex or like this bad situation I was with.” It's totally like a gab sesh and that's fun. But I think when I sit down and write my own stuff, I'm like, “here are all the red flags, but at the end of the day, I am absolutely going back and I'm falling for it and it's like, no shame.”

I just like flipping the script a little bit. I'm not perfect in any way, and I'm not trying to write these to show that there is perfection. Being relatable is about opening up those sides of people. Listening to music, that's being able to listen to something and see yourself in that. You don't have to talk about it because it's already there, and it's already someone that can talk to you about it. I've fallen in love with the songs that I've written that are very imperfect and create this sloppy world of being in these relationships.

LUNA: I thought that “Morphine” in particular was awesome; the slow build from an acoustic guitar to a full band at the end. Was that progression meant to match the general theme of the album—a story that descends into chaos?

FROST: “Morphine” is one of the songs I wrote, I think, three years ago. It was totally on acoustic guitar the whole time, and I sang more quiet[ly] and there was no chorus. [It was] so different from what it [is] now. I went to maybe like three different producers in between, and each of them had such a cool take on it. But it wasn't there until I started working with my producers, Dean, who goes by Mosaic, and his brother Graham. I gave it to them, and they crushed it. They totally understood to not rush it, and to just dive into each part as its own thing and section. It was the first time I was able to open up like at the end doing that scream. I'd never done that before and it was like, it was just such a good atmosphere, and I think we were all feeling that energy of wanting to make it as big as we can. That was just a big sign to base the album [off] this song.

LUNA: “Morphine” also sort of reminds me of the song "Happier Than Ever" by Billie Eilish. You've said before that she's an inspiration of yours, along with Elliott Smith and Bob Dylan. What is it about these artists and their musical style that inspires you the most?

FROST: Billie Eilish—it's the spookiness that I love. That's what I fell in love with. It's just weird. I think a lot of my music is dark and it's fun to lean into that Billie inspired dark creepy vibe. “Happier Than Ever”—I love that song and just that release [of emotions]. Bob Dylan, Elliott Smith—I grew up listening to them. I love Bob Dylan's writing. Honestly, I think it's the folky part of it that probably seeps into my music.A lot of the songs I write, like “Pushing Daisies,” it's not like: verse, pre-chorus, verse, pre-chorus, bridge, chorus. It's not like that. It's like: section A, section B, section C. I think that’s taken from folk music and country. It's about the words and it's about the development in the story and the arc.

LUNA: That's great. These are some of the best songwriters of all time.

FROST: Yeah, and then Elliott Smith. It just feels like a shot to the chest every time. And of course, I want that. I want people to feel that.

LUNA: I also wanted to talk a little bit about “Hit Girl” because I thought that was a great album closer, and I felt like it reflected the death of a past version of yourself. Would you say that writing the music for this album played any part in helping you find that closure, healing or self-love, as you describe it?

FROST: Yeah. I'd say the huge part of this album is, and why I started writing it, was because I was doing a lot of writing for other artists. You know, you move to a new city, you're meeting new people all the time, you're just starting your career. I had a mentality for a long time of “just say yes, just say yes” because you never know what new opportunity will come. I think it's super important to do that until there's a point where it's also really important to say no; carve out the chunk of time and know what actually is gonna give you creativity, and also what's gonna strip it away from you.

I was just coming to these points of feeling total brain dead exhaustion and lack of creative drive. I'd never reached burnout before. I hit this point of just like, “what the fuck am I doing? Who am I? Is my music even good?” I actually came back to some of these songs I was sitting on that I didn't think I was going to release, and I just sat with them and realized this is my sound, this is cool, let's dive into that. People have told me so many times [that] you won't succeed until you're actually yourself, your true self. I'm [at that] time in my life where I'm trying to figure that out, and I think that is what shaped so many of these songs. I think “Hit Girl” at the end [is] a recognition of [being] aware [that] what I was is not me, and I'm still trying to figure it out. But I'm there. I'm on the journey.