Justin Tranter: The Last Laugh

Justin Tranter has long had a love affair … with words.

“I had quotes from songs painted all over my walls when I was a kid,” the GRAMMY® Award-nominated songwriter and proud activist remembers during a recent interview with American Songwriter. “I obsessed over the lyrics of people like Jewel and Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco. I just couldn’t get enough of them.”

Indeed, it was those very words that both comforted and stirred Tranter, serving as a daily reminder to the genre-bending kid who grew up in the hoity-toity suburbs of Chicago back in the ’90s.

“‘I am walking on the bridge/I am over the water/and I’m scared as hell/but I know there’s something better,’” recites Tranter, recalling the words painted on the ceiling above their bed as a teen. “It’s the bridge of Paula Cole’s song ‘Me.’ I would read those words every night. I lived those words.”

Tranter pauses a moment to take in the enormity and the importance of that forgotten memory.

And then, Tranter continues.

“I knew there was something better out there for me,” the gender non-conforming force says quietly. “I just knew there was something better.”

That “something better” has come in numerous forms throughout Tranter’s lifetime, a life filled with its share of immense success and occasional heartbreak for the 39-year-old who may very well turn out to be one of the greatest songwriters of our time. 

Tranter recently racked up a second No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart via Selena Gomez’s emotional heartbreaker “Lose You to Love Me,” which Tranter wrote alongside Gomez, Julia Michaels and Mattman & Robin (Mattias Per Larsson and Robin Lennart Fredrikksson).

In 2019, Tranter wrote on two of the biggest albums in recent memory – Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next and The Jonas Brothers’ Happiness Begins – and collaborated with artists such as Camila Cabello, Dua Lipa, King Princess, YUNGBLUD and Sara Bareilles. 

But much like every song has a hook, Tranter’s story has a beginning. 

And that beginning wasn’t as pretty as one might think.

“My whole life in public school couldn’t be worse,” Tranter remembers of their years growing up in their hometown of Lake Zurich, Illinois. “I was always proud to be feminine and I wasn’t afraid of it. But the kids were just as mean as you could possibly imagine, all day and every day.”

And while Tranter’s picture-perfect family “couldn’t be cooler and nicer” about who they were at their core, the fact is that their family was terrified every time Tranter walked out the door and into the often cruel world of traditional suburbia.

“They were afraid for me,” Tranter explains. “My mom would be like, ‘Are you sure you want to wear that? Because I’m afraid for your safety; I’m afraid for you.’ It was coming from fear of my safety, not from a fear of having a queer kid.”

Regardless, Tranter did walk out that door every day and ended up facing an onslaught of bullying and hurtful comments from those who refused to take the time to understand them.

But that was OK. Because then, Tranter discovered theater.

“The first time I had the courage to sing in front of people was truly a life-changing moment,” says Tranter, who began attending theater camp during the summer after seventh grade. “Getting involved in musical theater and choruses just felt so freeing. I mean, I was terrified because I knew the bullying would get worse … and it did. I just didn’t care because it was all so exciting.”

However, that excitement soon turned into outright fear as the bullying became relentless. In their sophomore year of high school, Tranter asked their family to let them attend the Chicago Academy of the Arts.

Granted, it took some convincing.

“My parents weren’t crazy about putting a 14-year-old on the train,” Tranter laughs heartily. “In order to get to school, my mom would have to drive to (the Chicago suburb of) Barrington, and then I would have to take an hour train ride into the city, and then I would have to take the bus for a 10-minute ride to school and then I would have to do it all again all alone on my way home. But then the bullying got so bad at public high school that my mom knew it was the safest option to put me on the damn fucking train.”

Once a student there, the Chicago Academy of the Arts began drawing more and more out of the kid with the wild imagination and immense talent.

“The first day walking through that school, I knew my life was going to be forever changed,” Tranter says. “Everything I have ever done can be traced back to the three and a half years at that school.”

In fact, when Tranter was a sophomore in high school, the creative force in the making wrote their very first song.

“I was at home and I was using this shitty keyboard with broken keys and all the letters of the notes written on the keyboard,” Tranter remembers. “Writing my first song is when I realized that this is exactly who I was and who I was always supposed to be.”

Interestingly enough, this first song did not go too deep into Tranter’s personal life or the experiences of a high school sophomore who had already been through far too much pain, but rather focused on the life of one of Tranter’s friends who just happened to have quite the “shitty father.”

“His dad was a piece of shit,” Tranter says. “I wasn’t ready to write about my life just yet. So I wrote about my friend’s life.”

After that song came another song, and after that song came another.

And then, a teacher at the Chicago Academy of the Arts overheard one of Tranter’s songs and encouraged them to meet with her every Friday to play her what they had written the week before.

“I wrote one song and I was a songwriter,” laughs Tranter. “That’s always been my brain and my personality. There were no more questions to ask. I was now a songwriter and I knew this is what I would do for the rest of my life. There was no question.”

But not so fast, Justin Tranter. Not so fast.

“It took me a lot longer to find success than I thought it would,” Tranter says quietly.

Indeed, after graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2002, Tranter wound up as a founding member of the New York glam-punk fire-starters Semi Precious Weapons. “In New York, I tapped into this magical, over-the-top version of myself,” they recall.

The band would tour and make albums, but soon it was dropped from its label; at a crossroads, Tranter was approached with the opportunity to “write songs for other people.”

“I was like, ‘well OK,’” Tranter remembers. “I mean, I was surviving by hosting parties but I was like, ‘I’m 32, I can’t throw parties for the rest of my life.’ But yeah, I had always been obsessed with the people who did write for others, like Linda Perry and Kara DioGuardi, so I went for it. During that time, every person and every single thing I saw became a lyric. It was crazy.” 

Tranter’s undeniable Midwestern work ethic shone brightly in those first writing sessions, accompanied by a work uniform that often included “a face of full makeup, six-inch heels and platinum blonde hair.”

“Here I was coming off the road with (Lady) Gaga with the coolest glam-punk band in NYC,” Tranter laughs at the thought. “I knew I wasn’t pop perfection, but I knew that I had a perspective to offer that no one else had. I wasn’t coming from the same place that everyone else was coming from.”

Tranter quickly went headfirst into songwriting work, often taking double writing sessions six days a week while working with some of pop music’s finest, including Julia Michaels.

“I just knew that we were speaking the same language and we knew our strengths were the exact opposite,” Tranter remembers. “We filled in all the gaps for each other.”

And then the hits just started coming, with Tranter co-writing songs such as Fall Out Boy’s quintuple-platinum “Centuries,” Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” and DNCE’s “Cake by The Ocean,” just to name a few.

“There are just artists that you know you belong with,” Tranter says. “People like Selena Gomez and Daniel Reynolds from Imagine Dragons and the list goes on. I mean, Bebe (Rexha) and I wrote ‘I’m a Mess’ the first day we ever met. She came in and told me she had wanted to cancel and that she was really going through a tough time and basically said, ‘I’m a Mess.’ And I was like, ‘Let’s write that song. Let’s not pretend and ignore the fact that you feel like this today.’ And that’s what I’ve always done – let people live in their truth. Vulnerability is my favorite fucking part of any songwriting session.”

Indeed, throughout their career, Tranter has led with their heart and encouraged everyone they share a studio with to do the very same thing.

“You have to understand, if this song doesn’t feel like it belongs to them, they are not going to want to sing it the rest of their lives and then you know you fucked up,” says Tranter, who recently began record label and publishing company Facet alongside longtime publisher Katie Vinten. “If you create something that they can’t even relate to in the moment, how they are going to relate to it five years down the line?”

Today, Tranter boasts 40 million single sales and 7 billion streams. But bragging ain’t Tranter’s thing.

“I’m not one of those people that have melodies that fall out of my face,” says Tranter, who was honored with ACLU’s prestigious Bill of Rights Award late last year. “That’s not how my brain works. But I do know I have confidence and I do know what I bring to the table.”

Tranter currently has two new huge musical projects in the works: a musical show (with Eve Ensler, Idina Menzel and Caroline Pennell) and a TV show that will focus on Tranter’s high school years.

That’s right – Tranter is finally ready to tell the personal side of their story.

“Everything else I do is about other people,” Tranter says. “None of this is about me. I mean, of the 10 different things I’m working on, only one or two is about me. But I feel like it’s time to tell three and a half years of my story. It feels very good.”

And yes, Tranter knows that sharing their story will soon mean that plenty of misunderstood kids with big dreams will now have someone to look up to.

They will be looking up to Tranter.

“We had Elton John and Freddie Mercury and George Michael, but they all started their careers in the closets. I mean, they had a bunch of hits once they came out so you couldn’t deny them,” Tranter laughs. “There wasn’t a clear music business icon to obsess over. So now to be that person to other people?” 

Tranter pauses again before continuing. 

“I wasn’t shown that there were options. But you know, I’m not the one singing the songs. There are options.”

So, does Justin Tranter like the idea of getting older?

“I love getting older,” they say with an undeniable flair. “Getting older is the most glamourous option available.”

And then Tranter laughs a carefree, “I’m right where I’m meant to be” laugh that further demonstrates that their journey to this moment was worth it.

“So much of my personality and who I am has been built on proving that I can make shit that the whole world likes,” Tranter says. “I wanted to prove all the bullies wrong and now I have done it. I fucking love it.”