Chrissy Costanza Talks Songwriting & Storytelling Through Lyrics
Against The Current's lead vocalist breaks down the stories behind their tracks, how her writing process has changed, and where she's drawing inspiration from these days.
When I first launched my writer’s series, I was dreaming of author interviews.
I’m a fiction writer (and fickle poet) and wanted to pick the brains of published creatives I admire, who share my love for the written word.
Then it dawned on me: I am in awe of and feel a camaraderie with all writers.
Anyone who feels compelled to put pen to paper - not only because they want to but because they have to - in order to better understand themselves and experience this life fully - is someone I want to talk to. Fiction writers, poets, memoirists, screenwriters, graphic novelists, songwriters, etc., etc. I want to hear from them all.
And who better to start with than Chrissy Costanza?
Chrissy Costanza is the lead vocalist of Against the Current, a rock band that quickly amassed an impressively large fanbase following their first upload to Youtube in 2013. The 3-minute lyric video was a recording of their first original song, “Thinking,” and gave the internet a taste of their sound. They’d also go on to supplement their original music with covers and collaborations with other online artists, notably Alex Goot and Kurt Hugo Schneider.
Ten years and 2.1 million subscribers on the platform later, Against the Current has skyrocketed from online sensation to international stardom.
In 2014, they released their debut EP, Infinity, and dropped their second, Gravity, less than a year later. In March of 2015, the band announced they’d signed with Fueled by Ramen, the same record label representing names like Paramore, Panic! At The Disco, fun., Jimmy Eat World, twenty one pilots, A Day To Remember, and more. They’d release two full-length albums (titled In Our Bones and Past Lives) and one EP, fever, under the label, plus collaborate on multiple singles for League of Legends Championship games.
Fast-forward to 2023, and the band is an independent operation once again, with renewed feelings of excitement for what’s to come of and from their creative process.
Ahead of their Nightmares and Daydreams World Tour (which kicks off Saturday, April 22nd in Orlando), I had the opportunity to hop on a video call with Chrissy and geek out over the creative writing process. Below, we discuss the vocalist’s songwriting process (from rough draft to final product), the artistic meaning behind each of the band’s EPs/albums, what inspires Chrissy to put pen to paper, and what’s next for the singer creatively.
From “Thinking” to “Blind Folded.” How has your songwriting process changed over the years? What was it then, and what is it now?
CC: When we did “Thinking” and the Infinity EP, we did it with a producer, etc., but a lot of the topline was written by me. It wasn’t until we did the full-length albums that we really worked with true topliners. So I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned is how to incorporate different cadences into lyrics. I remember, so clearly, being frustrated when I couldn’t make a line. I was like, “This is a perfect lyric, but it doesn’t fit in this space.” Then I realized, over time, I have a lot more creative freedom than I thought I did. I can really play with the timing and how I approach these words to get them to fit into a space.
Another thing was just not needing to be so literal all the time. [When we started Against the Current] I was 15. I was writing things like, “You make me sad,” and that’s what the lyrics were. They were very to-the-point, very blunt. But, I think that’s why it connected with a lot of people my age.
I grew up listening to Taylor Swift, and I know she got a lot of criticism in her early days for her straightforward lyrics, but I got exactly what she was saying. It connected to me so clearly. Over time, I learned to take the same ideas, but dress them up and use metaphors to convey similar ideas without having to literally map out the entire situation; making it a little more artistic and a little more visual.
I can definitely see that. In preparation for this interview, I listened to your entire discography - again - and yes, “Thinking” is so young. Which is appropriate, because you were so young. Then “Blindfolded” and fever, in general, feel like it’s told like a story. Which I love.
CC: Thank you so much! I really like the storytelling aspect of songs. I love books, and I love fantasy books and I kind of just wanted to start taking that approach to music — when it’s appropriate. Obviously, some songs are going to be a little more blunt, in-your-face. But, just kind of taking the listener, just like you would take a reader, on a journey where it’s not just “here is what the character is thinking” — me being the character — but, instead, showing it, rather than telling. That’s been a really fun exercise and something I want to continue to dive a lot more into, especially with our new music. We have a really strong idea of what the major theme is, so it’s something that, I think, is going to be really fun to write around.
Well, it’s funny you bring up “theme” because that’s my next question. All of your EPs and albums have such different vibes to them. What comes first for you? The theme of an album, or the songs that you work into a theme? What influences what?
CC: Historically, it’s been more the songs, and then finding the thread between them. Which I haven’t necessarily liked as much. Fever was kind of the exception; it was so obvious what I was feeling when we were going in and writing those songs. The theme was there. I didn’t necessarily have to lay it out. Whereas, with this next body of music that we’re doing, to me, the theme is so clear and it’s been a very different experience writing with the intent of it fitting within a theme, as opposed to just writing open-endedly. Which I really like. Historically, when I’ve written songs, it was like, this could be about anything, anytime, any feeling, anywhere. I really like focusing it in now, in this new body of work, being like “This is what we’re talking about, these are the themes, so it needs to play into this.”
Can you break down the inspirations behind what drove the songwriting of each album/EP?
CC: Infinity is very young — stars in my eyes. Super stoked about life, just pumped to be there. There were definitely some of those breakup/angsty elements, but what did I know about that kind of stuff anyway? It was more of that teenage “I love you, but you don’t love me back.” It wasn’t too deep, but it was really fun to write.
[When we wrote] Gravity we were figuring ourselves out in the world. Figuring out our place. I had to come to grips with some mental health issues that I had always struggled with since I was very young but didn’t understand the weight of — or the *gravity,* if you will. Will had just lost his grandfather, which is what Gravity started about. It was our first time really losing people that were so influential and so consequential to our lives. So meaningful. We were starting to process more complex emotions and more nuanced emotions, not just happy/sad. Those kinds of in-between moments.
In Our Bones was our first full-length album. We were very high on life, really excited, [thinking] we were going to be the biggest band in the world, really stoked. “Running with the Wild Things” was just angsty, like “you can’t hold us down, society can’t get us.” “Young and Relentless” was very go-go-go. The whole thing was very high energy.
There are obviously a couple of more sobering moments [on In Our Bones], like “Roses” and “Demons.” “Demons” was that first real attempt to explain, in a more subdued, descriptive way, “Hey, I’m struggling with something and I don’t know how to process it.” It’s still some of my favorite lyrics ever. I think some of them are a little too self-serving, like “I’m pushing through the blood in you to heal where you've been hurting.” [It was a reference to how] blood is healing, new blood rushes to an injury, and I wanted to get there first. I might have been a little too metaphorical [to get my point across], but it made sense to me.
Past Lives was an interesting [album to write] because there were a lot more things manufactured by the label. We were trying so hard to write a pop song because that’s what we were told we had to do, even though that really wasn’t authentic to us. I do think some of the themes were another step into really acknowledging the things that hurt, even though they got lost in this pretty, polished album: “Strangers Again” [is about] waking up next to someone that you realize you hate, to the point where, when they touch you, it feels like a stranger is touching you. “Voices” and “Personal” are kind of evolutions of “Paralyze” and “Gravity,” where it’s that loss and inner struggle. “Come Alive,” which I know was a less popular song on the album, but for me, was really important because it was all about that feeling of not letting yourself stay numb. I was really starting to understand what I was feeling and what I was experiencing...
Fever was very angry; we were just fed up. Everything felt like it was breaking around us, like we had a fever; there was an infection. Everything felt very, very hot. Our bodies, the worlds around us, were trying to burn out that infection. And we were part of the infection, the three of us. “That Won’t Save Us” isn’t about a relationship; it’s about us and realizing that our attitudes are not going to fix the problems we have now. [The EP] was very much about screaming into the void after we let it all build up inside. We had to let all of this out of our system.
I can’t listen to your song, “Personal,” without crying. What place do you have to be in to write a song that speaks to such a heavy topic and heavy emotions? Because I know myself, and when I’m in a hard place, I can’t write about it. How do you go about putting pen to paper?
CC: I think, for me, that’s where using more metaphors came into play. I’m not good at telling someone, point blank, I am feeling like this. But in these moments I would have really strong visuals in my head, where I would be like, “It feels like this,” not, “It feels this.” I picture a scene in my head or some kind of visual that, to me, encapsulates that emotion, and describe that instead. That makes it easier to make sense of everything I was feeling, even when I was no longer actively feeling those things.
For “Personal,” specifically, I remember when I was going back to write it, and it wasn’t as fresh anymore, I was trying to figure out how I felt about this person’s death. Ironically the biggest thing was, I just took it so personally. I was so mad and so angry that I felt almost as if it were done to me, in a way. It wrote itself after that.
Are there any songs you look back on and you’re like, wish I would have done it differently, or —
CC: Not done it at all?
Yeah.
CC: I think “Scream” was one of those. It just doesn’t seem to… it doesn’t fit anywhere. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad song for someone, it just wasn’t an Against the Current song. I don’t even feel like I’m a part of that song, even though I did write most of the lyrics. Just something about it doesn’t feel like the way that I would have delivered it if I could have on my own.
So, you’ve been promising new music on social media. What, if anything, can you tell me about the experience of writing these new songs?
CC: First of all, we just got the master back for our first single yesterday, so it’s done. It’s ready. It’s coming! She’s on her way.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m writing with a theme in mind. We’re going on the Nightmares and Daydreams World Tour and I really like that line. That line really stuck with me after writing it. “All my nightmares used to be daydreams.” I really wanted to go into that more, because I feel like that’s happened so many times to me in my life, where something I wanted so badly wasn’t everything I thought it would be or it was an absolute disaster.
It’s not necessarily binary, though. It’s not like “Hey, it’s really great” and “Now it’s really bad.” There are a lot of nuances there I really wanted to play with that duality. There’s a lot of space for some really weird, really dreamy, really trippy, cool, twisted things lying in the space between nightmares and daydreams, and I love that. I’ve also been so emotionally fulfilled writing all of these songs because I feel like they’re all so authentic to me, like a diary of sorts.
I know how to edit an article. I know what the editing process is for a novelist. What is it like for a lyricist?
CC: For a lot of the albums, we’d actually write the songs the same day we’d cut a vocal, which was crazy. It worked for some stuff, but now I’ve been writing, leaving it for a while, then coming back to it.
There are some songs that have been rewritten entirely, multiple times, and then edited and refined and rewritten here and there. The editing process is pretty extensive. Maybe too extensive, to the point where I can’t take my hands off of it, like “Ah I can always make this better.” But it’s definitely nice to have more freedom to go back and revise and be like “I can do this better.” I also don’t feel pressure to get it perfect the first time I’m putting it down.
Have there been songs that you loved, and you were going to bat for, but didn’t fit, so you had to let them go?
CC: There definitely have been a couple of songs, and also a couple of lyrics, where I was like, “I need this lyric in the song,” and everyone else was like, “You really don’t.” Then there are songs I feel like we should have released or we should have gone harder on. I went, like, 80 percent hard for those songs, but the couple of times I’ve gone 100 percent for a song, I was right.
“Wasteland” was one of those songs. I was really burnt from writing the whole album, and that was the first [time] I thought, maybe this isn’t all so great. I didn’t want to make the mistake of waking up in a wasteland. It was written after the fact, and the album was pretty much done. No one wanted to put it on the album, but I was like, “This song has to go on the album, I will not back down on this one.” I think I know when I’m getting hung up on something because I’m emotionally attached to it, versus, like, no this is *it.*
It is, but, you know, there’s always an opportunity to do an Unreleased Track Album…
CC: There it is. I know. Honestly, I don’t know how it would work with songs we wrote while we were on the label. But, if we could find a way to make it work, we have so many, because we wrote, like, 40 songs for each album, so there are dozens of Against the Current songs that never came out. It’s a trove of music.
That’s awesome. With so many songs in your body of work — released and unreleased — are there any subject matters that you haven’t tackled yet, that you would like to?
CC: Yes, and I’m currently starting to tackle them. I’ve always written from a first-person perspective, and recently I’ve been playing with the idea of writing from the perspective of my favorite heroines in books that I relate to. [The lyrics wouldn’t be] a departure from my own emotions; they’ll just be through their eyes from their literal experience and correlate to my emotional experience.
I feel like I’m limited by my own experiences. I’m in a happy relationship, which is a great thing, it’s awesome, but it doesn’t give me a whole lot to write about. I am not a love song writer. I’m not good at it. Once in a while, I can get one out, the “Something You Needs,” but I can’t frequently write a really eloquent love song; it needs to be a disastrous romance of some sort. So I thought, well, what if I use the experiences of my favorite fictional characters, and then kind of put myself through their eyes and write like that?
I also just like being transported out of the real world, so I wanted to try more of that, too. There’s a really good song that just came out, “Labour” by Paris Paloma. The video and lyrics are all set in the medieval-ish era. Instead of the bedroom, she says the bed chamber, but the song composition is very modern. It’s so cool and so well done. It’s really good inspo. I hate a song where I hear a word like “cellphone.” I’m the same way with the books that I read. I don’t want to be reminded of the real world.
Last question. Let’s say you’re at a concert. The lead singer gets sick and they need someone to come on stage and fill in. Who is that lead singer, and what song do you want to sing in their place?
CC: Oh my God, that’s so difficult! You know what? This is a weird one. It’s a pop song, but it was my karaoke go-to for a while, and, dare I say, I crushed it. It was a fun time. “The Middle by Zedd and Maren Morris. I love that song. It’s a great song. It’s so fun to sing. It’s just one of those songs that gets everyone pumping.
Either that, or, like (I know this is also basic, but I am basic) “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers.
OR, wait!
Sorry.
I change my answer.
“When You Were Young” by The Killers.