Lucy Frost’s music lives in the space where vulnerability meets imagination. Her songwriting takes difficult experiences such as burnout, heartbreak, toxic relationships and the struggle to find yourself again, then reshapes them through dark humour, cinematic imagery and emotionally direct storytelling. At the centre of that creative world is her debut album, Vitamins, a 13-song project that traces the process of losing your sense of self and slowly finding your way back to it.
For Frost, Vitamins became more than an album. The process of making it helped her reconnect with her own identity as an artist and discover a sound that finally felt completely her own. The title itself carries a clever contradiction. Each song can act like a daily dose of something that helps you through life, while also reflecting the way people sometimes use routines and distractions to appear put together while quietly repressing what they are actually feeling.
That tension runs throughout her writing. Frost can approach painful subjects with remarkable honesty, but she also leaves room for sarcasm and humour. Influenced by writers such as John Prine and Hayes Carll, she understands that laughter can sometimes become part of the healing process. Her songs do not simply point fingers at difficult relationships. They often turn inward, exploring the uncomfortable voice in our own heads and the reasons we sometimes remain connected to things we already know are hurting us.
Musically, Frost draws from a wide and unexpected range of influences. The intimate storytelling of Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley and Bob Dylan meets the contemporary wit of Billie Eilish and Lola Young, while her background in film scoring adds another layer of cinematic thinking to her work. As a multi-instrumentalist and Berklee-trained composer, she has the technical ability to move between genres, but Vitamins represents the point where those different sides of her musical identity have begun to come together naturally.
Her visual approach to songwriting is equally important. Frost often imagines scenes, music videos and live theatrics while creating, allowing those images to influence the production and emotional shape of a song. Her experience writing with and for other artists has also expanded her perspective, giving her the freedom to explore different musical worlds while making her own work feel even more personal.
In this conversation, Lucy Frost opens up about the emotional journey behind Vitamins, the relationship between heartbreak and self-discovery, the role of humour in processing pain, and the challenge of finding an individual sound while carrying so many influences. She also reflects on the different creative identities shaped by Boston and Los Angeles, her evolution through collaboration, and what the making of Vitamins taught her about herself. What emerges is the portrait of an artist still discovering how much she has to say, and becoming increasingly confident in how she wants to say it.
Vitamins is built around burnout, heartbreak, toxic relationships, self-discovery, and ultimately healing. When you look at the album as a complete story, what was the emotional journey you needed to document for yourself?
I think ultimately it comes down to losing yourself; whether it’s to a past relationship or curating your identity/career to fit someone else’s expectations, either way we end up a shell of a human. And the rest of the album we try bit by bit to find our way back and re-discover the individuality we lost. And all this mirrors how I was feeling; the actual process of putting together an album was the healing I needed, it allowed me to really tap into my own sound and helped me figure out who I am as an artist.
You describe each of the 13 songs as being like a daily vitamin, something that might help the listener feel a little better. Was that idea present when you began writing the album, or did it emerge as you realized what the songs were collectively becoming?
I actually had the title in the very beginning because there was a 14th song called “vitamins” that I ended up scrapping along the way, but the name remained the perfect encapsulation of what these songs meant to me. The two meanings, the first being how you put it; taking each song as a way to cope with whatever is happening in your life. And the other meaning being, the act of mindlessly taking a vitamin daily to make you feel put together, but really you’re just repressing how you actually feel.
There is a striking balance in your songwriting between emotional honesty and sarcasm. How important is humor to you when writing about painful experiences, and can making yourself laugh at something painful sometimes be another form of healing?
Oh, absolutely. Sarcasm and humor are why I love songwriting so much, and for sure a way of healing. It most likely stems from country/folk writers like John Prine and Hayes Carl who are able to write about love using dry humor and satirical language, I just love it. But I think if you ask anyone who knows me personally, they will say humor is very much how I cope with my problems. Which, I know, sounds like a major red flag haha, because it can be a way of ignoring what’s really bothering me. But I also think being able to not take things so seriously is a gift in itself too, it keeps you humble and able to see the big picture and ultimately helps you heal through really hard times, and I think both can exist in my writing.
The album traces a toxic relationship from its impulsive beginning through its collapse and eventually toward self-love. Did writing the record help you understand the relationship differently from how you experienced it in real time?
100%. A lot of the songs that follow this triggering relationship (Morphine, Lines, Prescription, Pushing Daisies…), I had written 2 years or more before the rest of the songs. So, a lot of change and life has happened in between. And although I am still able to tap into the raw, gritty chaos of breakup and withdrawal with this person, it doesn’t feel like the end of the world. I now see it as the start of this journey I’ve been going through, rather than a dis-track for this individual. And this self-awareness really brought the album together, because it’s not about breakup, it’s about losing yourself and then having to start over to rediscover who you are and why we made the choices we did.
Songs such as “Shit Kicker,” “Prescription,” “Lines,” and “Lead Paint” each suggest very different emotional and conceptual worlds. How do you use titles, imagery, and unusual phrases to say things that a straightforward love song might not be able to express?
Well, a lot of my writing uses a second- and third-person point of view, almost to act like the voice in my head. Instead of writing, like “this guy is the worst and ruined my life,” I like to spin it into a conversation with myself to make it more interesting. It’s now about the way we know he’s bad for us and yet we still manage to get ourselves in this situation. Lines does the evil head voice well; just that disappointment we feel in ourselves, I think that’s as relatable as going through a similar break up, and a lot of pop songs don’t do that. And Shit Kicker, I mean, you don’t need an internal conversation to see the irony in this song. This and Lead Paint exist in similar worlds to me; the humor and sarcasm mixed with dark, cinematic visuals isn’t something a lot of people are doing.
Your music brings together the intimate storytelling associated with singer-songwriters such as Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, and Bob Dylan with the contemporary wit of artists like Billie Eilish and Lola Young. How do you balance those influences while making sure the final work still sounds unmistakably like Lucy Frost?
I’ve been honing in on my sound for a long time, the reason this album is so meaningful is that I’ve landed on something that feels truly unique and me. As much as my songwriting has been shaped by artists like the ones you mention, my music is certainly shaped by film scores and dark pop/glitch worlds. I’ve done a lot of work with trailer covers and compositions, while at the same time, some of my all-time favorite songs are country. And everything boils down into the music I’m writing today, so I just hope people can see all of these sides of me at some point while listening.
Your background in film scoring is particularly interesting because Vitamins is described as having cinematic textures. When you are writing a song, do you sometimes imagine scenes, characters, colors, or camera movements before you know exactly what the music should sound like?
Yes, I’m a very visual person and it’s easy for me to conceptualize a scene or music video while writing something. Even just being able to picture how a certain song could be played live and the theatrics of it all, it definitely influences the production quite a bit.
As a multi-instrumentalist and Berklee-trained composer, you have the technical ability to build music in many different genres. Does having that knowledge ever make songwriting more complicated, or have you learned to trust instinct over the temptation to overthink the arrangement?
This is definitely why it’s taken me a while to pinpoint my individual sound, because I love so many different genres of music, I love composing at the piano and playing Philip Glass, then writing cheesy country songs, and then listening to psychedelic guitar solos. But one of the things I learned early on with film scoring, is that there can absolutely be a wrong way to make something; like how the most beautiful piece of music can be so wrong for a scene that it loses its emotional complexity entirely. And I still hold on to this, that there is a right place and right time for certain production elements and storytelling, and there will always be other outlets to feed into, I don’t need to pack all my knowledge into one song.
You have written and composed with artists including Natalie Jane, Ari Abdul, Devon Gabriella, and Bluey Thomas while also working with producers and writers across different creative environments. How has writing for other artists changed the way you understand your own voice as an artist?
It’s made me more confident in my storytelling and sound. It’s allowed for this whole other musical outlet (creating in a different genre, using language and words I usually wouldn’t, etc.) that when I do sit down to write for myself, I feel like it’s the most authentic, intimate escape and the result is unique to me. Collaboration has also opened my mind to new sounds and experiences that definitely influence me as an artist and have stopped me from staying in one box and only doing one thing.
You have performed in both Los Angeles and Boston, two cities with very different musical identities. How have those two places shaped the performer and songwriter you have become, and what do you think each city brings out of you creatively?
Well, Boston is where I grew up and where my family still lives, so in a way it’s always brought out my childhood and memories of listening to Foo Fighters and playing piano when I need to let off some steam; it’s the heart of why I love music in the first place. Whereas LA is growth and braving new experiences, moving to a whole other city and having to make it my own, it’s paved the space for me to really curate who I am sonically. So, I think both will always have a place in my heart and my music.
Your songs often take deeply personal experiences and turn them into stories that other people can recognize themselves in. How do you decide what parts of your life belong in a song and what parts should remain yours alone?
I think like everyone, there are parts of my life I don’t want to share completely with the world, but it’s rare that I hold back entirely. Sometimes I have to stop myself from getting too vivid while writing something personal because I realize it takes away from the musicality of the song. But I think that’s the fun part about storytelling; it allows you to share these deeply personal things without feeling victimized by them. Whether that means it’s written from a friend’s point of view, or camouflaged in sarcastic humor, I can still use that intense emotion/memory as the starting point for a song but warp it in a way that feels digestible and the process of doing this is still a cathartic release for me.
After writing an album about burnout, heartbreak, rage, and healing, what did you learn about yourself that you did not know when the first song for Vitamins was written?
That I am an impatient perfectionist haha. But seriously, if it was up to me, this album would’ve come out last January. And yet, the perfectionist side of me will always see the flaws and room for editing in these songs. So, it’s been a challenge for sure, but a very rewarding one and an incredible learning experience that will definitely pave the way for my next album to come together. And really, it’s just shown me that there is so much living in my brain that I can’t wait to share with the world.
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