If you don’t know the name Justin Tranter, you definitely know their work. Anyone who has turned on a radio or glanced at the Billboard charts in the past decade is familiar with at least some of the massive hit songs they’ve written for stars like Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Halsey, and many others.

Now, after nearly 10 years of working behind the scenes and crafting countless smashes, Tranter is finally earning some well-deserved and long-overdue recognition.

Tranter is one of five people currently nominated for the “Songwriter of the Year” Grammy. The category was only introduced a year ago, so very few talents have been up for the honor. Tranter stands out as one of the only people in the LGBTQ community to be up for the award — and amazingly, they’re not even the only one in the running this year.

While Tranter may be one of the top songwriters in the pop genre, they’re really a rockstar at heart. They spent years trying to make it big as the lead singer of the rock band Semi Precious Weapons, which was one of the hottest underground alternative acts more than a decade ago. They released several albums, earned praise from critics, and toured with Lady Gaga. But their breakout moment never came.

Instead of letting the world beat them up and force them to stop creating, Tranter decided to lend their talents to other musicians as a songwriter, and success rapidly followed.

Becoming a successful songwriter is notoriously difficult, especially in the often fickle world of pop music, but Tranter managed to rise to the top while not only refusing to compromise who they really are but by being as loud and proud as possible.

Tranter’s incredible success and recent nomination are made that much more meaningful because they did it on their own terms. They didn’t hide their authentic selves, or even dim their shine. They channeled all of that kick-ass attitude into chart-topping bops the world can’t get enough of. It’s their quirks and experiences that make them so successful, not hold them back from success.

After missing the mark with one creative project, they didn’t give up. They simply found another outlet, one that has brought them fame, fortune, and soon, perhaps one of the most coveted awards in music.

“I scream in my truth,” Tranter said during our recent Zoom interview. “I love in my truth. I fuck in my truth. I make music in my truth.” One look at the fabulous songwriter, who identifies as non-binary and uses all pronouns, makes it clear that they are not shying away from showing the world who they are.

Tranter’s career trajectory is a lesson for every queer person to study. Their life is a masterclass in bravery, confidence, talent, hard work, perseverance, and proof that camp always wins the day.

METRO WEEKLY: I’m a huge Grammy nerd, and I was thrilled watching the announcements and seeing your name pop up. How did it feel to earn not just a Grammy nomination, but one for “Songwriter of the Year?”

JUSTIN TRANTER: It’s fucking insane. It’s insane for so many reasons. One, the music business hates songwriters deeply — and if you use this quote, please mention there’s a smile on my face while I say it — because it’s true, but also I’m being funny.

The music business really hates songwriters because they know how important they are and they don’t want us to ever exercise that power. For a very long time, there were [only] a couple [of] categories that songwriters could be nominated in. It’s “Song of the Year,” which I am lucky enough and honored to have been nominated in before. It was five songs every year. I think now it’s 10 songs every year. It’s very, very few categories that songwriters are actually included in the nomination.

Up until recently, you could have written every song on an album, and when it’s nominated for “Album of the Year,” you don’t get nominated. I’ve been a part of, I think, seven or eight albums that have been nominated for “Album of the Year,” but I didn’t get nominated. Now you have to write, I think, thirty percent of the album, which I have been lucky enough to do a couple times, but for the most part, in pop music, you do a song or two and that’s it. It’s very rare to get nominated for anything as a songwriter. So to be nominated for “Songwriter of the Year” is such a fucking honor.

Only ten people have ever been nominated for this because it’s such a new award. The Grammys are just now going, “Oh, hey, yeah, songwriters exist.” The Grammy members are fellow musicians, fellow songwriters, fellow music makers, so to know that fellow music makers think that I am worthy of such a crazy title nomination is beautiful. Humbling isn’t the word because that’s such an overused word when it comes to these things. I don’t even think it’s true. It just doesn’t feel real.

I’ve worked my ass off. I know that, in certain ways, I am worthy, but in other ways, as a queer person, as a songwriter, you’re so used to never being acknowledged. Maybe it will feel humbling eventually, but right now I’m just like, “I don’t even know if this is actually reality. I’m not sure.”

MW: You’ll find out in a couple of months, I guess.

TRANTER: This is a cliche. I don’t think being nominated is all that matters. I think sometimes that that’s bullshit. In this situation, with the other four songwriters nominated, these four people are all fucking geniuses. I stan all four of these people I’m nominated with. We all fucking deserve all the love in the world. If any of them get it, I’ll be the first one cheering. I’ll be the first one throwing them a party.

If I felt like some of them didn’t deserve it, I’d be going into this a little more rooting for myself, but they’re literal geniuses. I don’t use that term lightly. These people are fucking brilliant. It’ll be a party no matter what.

MW: How did you find out you were nominated?

TRANTER: Last year, it was the first time they had this category. I really had my hopes up for the nomination. I did the campaigning. I posted. There was a special Grammy publicist hired. I went hard to try to be in the inaugural class of this nomination. I had a huge radio hit, I did a soundtrack for Netflix, and I didn’t get the nomination.

You control what you submit for people to review, as this is my body of work. Last year, I submitted whatever was the biggest from the year. This year, I submitted what I thought, as a songwriting geek, that other songwriting geeks would be like, “Oh, yeah, that shit’s awesome.” I did not submit my biggest — I submitted what I thought was my best.

I didn’t campaign. I didn’t hire the special Grammy publicist. I didn’t do any of this shit. I got a text about ten minutes before nominations were announced from the sweetheart and the genius, Jack Antonoff. He said — I’m paraphrasing — “Fingers crossed, this better be your fucking year.” And I was like, “I’m not getting my hopes up this time. It is what it is, but thank you. I love you. Thank you.”

So I went about my morning and was on my way to walk my dog, and all of a sudden, in seconds, my phone just exploded. It literally exploded.

Shane McAnally texted me congrats, and I was like, I need to see who else was nominated because I need to respond to Shane correctly, because there’s a very good chance he was nominated. When I saw that Shane was nominated too, I FaceTimed him instead of texting him back. A pretty cool moment between two queer people from two different genres, who are friends. He and I just started writing together. We wrote our first song together a couple of months ago, and a huge artist cut it and it’s coming out.

It’s a very diverse group of nominees, which always makes me proud of the music business, and to see two big old queers in there is pretty cool.

MW: One year, you submitted all of your big radio hits that everyone would know, and then the next year, changed it up and went with what you thought was your best. But most of your songs go on to become hits. You’re not just a good songwriter, you’re a commercially massive songwriter. What makes a song a hit as you’re writing it?

TRANTER: To me, the most honest idea is the clearest idea. The closer you can get to either the songwriter’s truth or the artist’s truth. If that artist is a co-writer, then you obviously focus on their truth because they’re going to go sing the song. If they aren’t in the room writing with you, you’re writing for them, I love conversations with them, at least to get as close as I can to their truth. And if we’re just writing a song to write a song, and you find it a home later, then it’s like, somebody in the room, this has to be their truth.

For me, I hone in on that one big main lyric that I feel can really define whoever’s going to sing the song and define them and what they’re feeling as quickly and easily as possible. Some great examples can run the gamut of emotion. “Bad at Love” with Halsey, I only wrote with her for that one day, and lucky enough, we got a big hit out of it. Through conversations with her about her life, the title “Bad at Love” came to my brain. It was borne out of conversation with her.

“Lose You to Love Me,” by Selena [Gomez] — me and Julia Michaels co-wrote that with Selena, and both of us have known Selena forever. When she said, “I’m finally ready to really 1000% clearly talk about this situation,” “Lose You to Love Me” came to us quickly, and then the rest of the lyrics fell out to get to that truth.

Then you can go to the flip side of it, something really fun. I was working with Joe Jonas for a week, and we’re trying to write pretty serious songs. He is a very smart, wonderful guy. But, in that moment, realizing maybe what would actually make the most sense and cut to the truth that you’re feeling right now, is something really fun and sexy. Because you keep showing me memes all day that are fucking hysterical and you’re stupidly hot, and he was newly in a new, fun relationship in that moment. It was like, “Actually, let’s stop taking ourselves so seriously. Maybe your truth for this moment is a really ridiculous sex song called ‘Cake by the Ocean.'”

For me, commercially, as someone who’s lyric-driven, it’s always like, let me find some way to cut to the most truthful statement I can, and then we build a song around that. And then there is melodic math that can come into play if you need it. For me, it always starts in that moment of lyrical truth, and then you use all your other skills and your tools to build out from there. But, if I don’t have that moment of magic, then your mathematical tools are just there to shine a turd, which I’m not interested in.

MW: I have to admit, of all the songs you’ve written, “Cake by the Ocean” might be my favorite.

TRANTER: You know what I love about that is, one, thank you very fucking much, and two, I hear that a lot more than I’d think, because it’s so goofy. For some reason, it means a lot to people. I think it just has that magical feeling you can’t describe.

It always makes me really proud when people say that, because I obviously co-wrote it with Mattman & Robin and Joe Jonas, but almost all of my other hits — not all, but most of them — involve another professional songwriter in the room, a full-time-only songwriter in the room, and that one was just me fucking going crazy and ridiculous all alone. When people say it’s their favorite, it makes me feel really good because it has more of my personality than any of my other hits. It always feels extra good, because I’m like, “Oh, wow, that’s your favorite? Well, cool. That means that you like how absurd I am, so maybe we’d be friends.”

MW: When I talk about it, I try to explain that it’s this category of entertainment that I love so much because it doesn’t make sense. I shouldn’t love this thing. What is it about? It’s so weird. Everything around the song is campy and ridiculous, but it works brilliantly, and that takes genius and an artistry that very few people have.

TRANTER: Well, that’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten. I hope that what you just said goes in this article so that I can have proof of that statement for the rest of my life.

If you leave me to my own devices, this is what I can bring you. Other things require a couple of collaborators, but if you’re looking for this statement, I can do that for you all alone.

MW: Is “Cake by the Ocean” the song you are most proud of?

TRANTER: I think it’s very, very close. I’m really proud of when I am there to be the channel for someone else’s greatness. A lot of the songs that I wrote with Julia [Michaels], my job was to be the channel, the emotional orchestrator, the literal orchestrator, the overseer of her genius, which I’m so grateful to do. It makes me very, very, very proud of our friendship, and of my role in making sure that her greatness got across the finish line.

But I think “Cake By the Ocean,” it’s very much my personality distilled into a pop song. I do speak ridiculously — I am a very positive, joyful person, and to be able to put that ridiculousness and campiness in a massive pop song does make me very proud.

It’s hard to say that I’m the most proud of it, but I’m the most proud for those reasons. But then also to be able to be there with Julia and Selena and write a song like “Lose You to Love Me,” to be a full-on collaborator, not leading the charge, to be a full-on team player, makes me just as proud as well.

So it’s hard to pick. Am I the proudest when I lead the way, or am I the proudest when I’m a team player? It’s hard to choose. I am proud of myself for being good at both of those things.

MW: Some songwriters and artists care about charts and sales and things like that, some really don’t. Is there a song that you wrote and you thought, “Wow, we’ve got a banger on our hands,” and it didn’t get the attention it deserved?

TRANTER: Yes, yes. Leon Bridges’ “Beyond.” I’m so proud of that fucking song, I’m so proud of getting to work with someone as brilliant as Leon, and I know, for Leon’s fans and for Leon’s world, that song is very important to them. To Leon’s fan base, that song is a smash. I felt like that should have taken him to the stratosphere and I’ll never know why it didn’t. It’s one of my favorites for sure.

MW: Of all the people you’ve written with, is there a story that you love to recount the most as, “My life is so crazy, look what I got to do. Look at this story?”

TRANTER: There’s so many, some that I would never tell publicly, because they’re great fucking stories but they’d be betraying the trust of people that I love and respect.

I very rarely get nervous to work with people. The people that I love deeply as a fan don’t really write with pop songwriters. The songwriters that I obsess over don’t write with people like me. Someone who I obsessed over — and still obsess over their lyrical prowess — is Courtney Love.

Very early in my career writing for other people, my first hit was with Fall Out Boy, and Fall Out Boy and Courtney Love have the same management. Through that, I was set up in a session with her, and I was still living with my former band members. One was married and one was in a serious relationship, so there were six people living in a two-bedroom house in this weird neighborhood in L.A.

Courtney Love came over. My band members love and respect her deeply, but I’m a super fan. I consider her one of the greatest lyricists of all time. And for her to come to this shitty house and make music with me and my very recently former band members — we had just ended the band — I was actually nervous, and my band members had never seen me nervous.

Courtney came in and couldn’t have been nicer and couldn’t have been cooler, and we are very friendly still. Thank God for my teenage dreams, we still get to be friends. She could tell I was nervous, but was being nice to me and letting me go through the motions, and I ended up killing it. We got a great song. We wrote two songs that day, and the second one was fantastic.

None of us smoke, but Courtney asked if she could smoke, so of course we said yes. And she’s chain-smoking cigarettes while writing free hand, pencil to paper, some of the best lyrics I ever saw, then throwing pages at me like, “Yeah, take your favorite and let’s figure out a melody for it. Go.”

If I would’ve told my 15-year-old self that this would happen, I would have believed it, because I was a very delusional teenager and believed that greatness was awaiting me. I would’ve believed that and I would’ve been very, very, very excited.

I think it was ten years ago this happened. The Fall Out Boy song came out in 2014, so nine years ago. Me, nine years ago, was still pretty pumped. Nine years ago, I was still nervous and over the fucking moon. And I was still early in my success, but I had opened for Gaga. Kate Moss was a super fan. I had already been around lots of important people, but to see the people that shape you as an artist…. I hadn’t become an asshole, and I’m still not an asshole.

I got to work with Ani DiFranco right before the pandemic, who’s a lyrical God to me as well. Her and Courtney are in my top five for sure. To get to work with those people that you worshiped as a kid, that are the reason why I started writing lyrics, that’ll always be the most special, for sure.

MW: If you’ve written with two of your top lyrical gods, who’s on the checklist that you haven’t yet had a chance to work with?

TRANTER: Stevie Nicks for sure, Tracy Chapman for sure. Ethel Cain for sure.

Because I got to work with Gwen Stefani quite a bit, so that box was already checked. I got Ani, I got Courtney, I got Gwen. Stevie, Tracy, Ethel. Ethel’s a new obsession, but the obsession is deep. It is very deep.

MW: It was nine years ago that Semi Precious Weapons split up and you began really pursuing songwriting for other people. Tell me about making that decision and that transition. Was that difficult?

TRANTER: When the band was dropped from Epic, which was our third record deal, we did release one more album through Tricky Stewart’s imprint with Capitol, which was RedZone Records. Tricky’s a genius, a sweetheart, I love him till the day I die. But we had just been dropped, and in that moment, we were trying to figure out how we would release this album, where it would go, and we needed to finish the album.

The wonderful human, Blue Hamilton, who signed my band to publishing, had left Warner Chappell, the publishing company. When I met with new people who were going to fill in the gaps with Blue leaving, I said, “Tricky has said to me that I should probably try to write for other people, that I’m good enough to do that. And, if someone like Tricky Stewart, who co-wrote and produced [Rihanna’s] ‘Umbrella’ and [Beyoncé’s] ‘Single Ladies,’ thinks that I’m a good enough writer to do this for other people, can you guys put me in sessions while the band figures out how to finish this album without a deal and where’s it going to go?”

I started doing a little bit of it before I officially pulled the plug on the band. The reason I pulled the plug on the band was because we had this manager who had made the business side of things so messy and twisted and dark that it became very clear the only way for us to ever make money in these awful deals he put us in, we would have to become a Top 10 grossing act of the year to ever actually see a penny.

I was 33, going on 34, when I made that decision to pull the plug, and my band members were all either the same age or even older. It was crunching the numbers, going into another record deal. It was like, “This just seems insane.”

I hadn’t had a hit yet, but I had momentum as a writer coming, and I said to my band members, “Let’s end the band.” We still lived together, so it was like, I’m going to see you in five minutes, but let’s end the band. I’m going to go so hard. There’s a door opening for me here, I’m going to fucking run through this fucking door, I’m going to work my off, and I promise I will find ways to help you guys in the music business once I get through this door.

Literally the next day, I just wrote the chorus for “Centuries” and I knew that Fall Out Boy had taken that chorus. I knew it was going to happen. I didn’t know when it was coming out. And the day after I pulled the plug on the band, and we’re all crying and drinking whiskey and Diet Coke in our shitty living room, on Fall Out Boy’s Twitter or Facebook or whatever in 2014 would be the way you’d announce something, they said, “Our new single, ‘Centuries,’ comes out in a week,” or whatever it was. I was like, “Okay, this is pretty fucking crazy.”

And then, pretty quickly, by the end of 2015, I was able to put the bass player, Cole Whittle, into DNCE, the “Cake by the Ocean” band. I was able to get the drummer and guitar player hired to be in Gwen Stefani’s band. The guitar player has gone on and has an amazing job at Apple Music creating visuals and editing documentary content. He does so many things, I couldn’t even tell you what his title is, but he’s been at Apple Music for many, many years.

I was able to keep my promise pretty quickly of getting them all pretty awesome jobs in the music business. It was like our dreams always came true.

Not only are they all brilliant and deserve my devotion and love, but they’re all straight and followed me on a very, very queer journey of Semi Precious Weapons, and got to actually experience homophobia firsthand by just association. Because everyone just assumed that they were gay because in 2007, ’08, ’09, ’10, ’11, people couldn’t imagine that straight guys would be in a band with a gay person.

We experienced wild shit together. They never asked me to wear less makeup. They never asked me to not wear pantyhose in an arena. They never said, “Can you put pants on?” They never said, “Can you wear a combat boot, not six-inch gold glitter heels?” They just followed me on that journey forever of ultimate fucking allies way before people were using that term every other sentence.

To be able to put the band to rest, but still make sure that I was able to take care of them how they took care of me for years, it’s pretty emotional and pretty beautiful.

MW: Speaking of Semi Precious Weapons, do you ever get the itch to, not necessarily reunite, but to go back out as an artist?

TRANTER: The thought of going back on tour or releasing some sort of pop album sounds like pure torture. It is a very young person’s game, and I am proudly not young anymore.

But I’m doing a lot of theater stuff, film and TV stuff, and I’m in the process of creating a concept album based on this story that I have written. I will play one of the characters on the concept album, but my character sings maybe two or three songs out of the 12 songs.

I’m singing better than ever because after you sit in a studio six days a week for ten hours a day, my musicality is at a higher level. My voice sounds better because I haven’t been touring for ten years. I am excited to sing on something again. But it is very much a theatrical concept experience.

I have no desire to exist in this sort of traditional rock and roll, or pop rock, or pop space. And I also love that artists can come and work with me and they know I’m not in any sort of competition. My job and my purpose in this world is to be there to serve their dreams — and only their dreams — for that moment.

MW: A concept album! Is that proof of concept for a musical? A movie? What’s the plan there?

TRANTER: It’s hopefully proof of concepts for all of those things. There are movie musicals that I’m creating from scratch. There’s a TV show that I’ve created from scratch that is not announced yet, so I can’t tell you the details, but it is bought and sold and moving. I am expanding my creativity. The theater kid in me is getting to exist in many different ways now, and this project, where I will sing a couple of songs, is a part of that expansion of my creativity and of my empire.

So yeah, it’s been really fun. Pop music is so important to me and I’ll always make it, but it has been nice to kind of stretch other muscles the last couple years.

MW: In this era we live in, of & Juliet, and Once Upon a One More Time, there’s very much room for a talent like you on Broadway.

TRANTER: Well, thank you. In this moment, I would rather die than do a jukebox musical of my songs. Max Martin’s catalog is ten times the size of mine. He has every right to do a jukebox musical, and he’s a fucking sweetheart and an amazing genius that I am honored to call a friend and sometimes a collaborator.

My catalog is not ready for a jukebox musical. I am not anywhere close to that yet, and I’m also just such a fan of original musicals that I am excited to be a part of creating those.

MW: Can you talk a bit about your journey of self-discovery and your journey through queerness?

TRANTER: I have been out of the closet since 1994, when I was 14 years old. I was never in the closet — I just hadn’t gone through puberty yet. There wasn’t enough literal growing up to have me define something. I was femme as fuck and flaming as fuck since day one and never hid a thing about myself — luckily, based on the DNA I was given in my brain chemistry and my parents always making me feel safe enough to live in that truth.

I’ve been out forever, and what’s amazing is to watch young people. Even though I don’t think definitions are necessary, they do help people. So for young people to be creating terms and creating definitions that I relate to, whether we want to use gender-nonconforming or nonbinary, or just even the great big help of queer being this huge umbrella term that I love, I’ve always lived in my truth. I’ve always been gay as fuck. I’ve always been femme as fuck.

Young people on social media are giving me terms to better describe myself when I feel that’s necessary. I’ve just been living as a femme fag forever. I hope that that’s the big headline of this article. I’ve been living as a femme fag forever.

To get to live as a femme fag who has now clawed my fucking way to the top of an industry that is very hard to claw your way to the top of, it makes me prouder and prouder every day that I stand in my truth. I scream in my truth. I love in my truth. I fuck in my truth. I make music in my truth. To be able to do that and still get to this level….

We don’t realize how many gay icons — and I don’t mean gay icons as in worshiping straight cis women who perform queerness back to us, I mean gay icons and gay people who have made music, film, and TV — almost all of them have started their careers in the closet in some way. Whether they were only in the closet for one or two hits, or they were in the closet for the first ten years of their career, depending on what generation they came out in.

Knowing how lucky I am to come to success, being out from the jump, I don’t take it lightly. I know how rare that is. I know how special it is, and I know how grateful I am that I got to do it.

MW: When I became aware of you, and correct me if I’m wrong, you identified as a gay man, and now maybe nonbinary is the better term. How has the music industry reacted to this changing orientation or labeling?

TRANTER: I’m exactly who I’ve always been, it’s just [that] young people told me there were words to maybe describe myself more clearly. But nothing has changed about who I am. I still very much feel in some ways connected to the gay experience. But I have never been allowed in circuit parties, or, I should say, I’ve never been welcomed in more masculine circuit party spaces. So that part of the gay experience was never my journey anyway.

So just because now I am able to use the term nonbinary, my experience and the way that I go through life has not changed in any way, shape, or form. In a great way, there was no freedom for me to have this new term. It was just a way to better describe to people. To most people in the music industry, I’m still the same femme fag they’ve been dealing with for a decade. Nothing has changed for them.

I use all pronouns. So there isn’t a pronoun discussion. Most of my close friends use they/them, but some of them don’t, and I don’t flinch or care or notice.

The 2024 GRAMMY Awards will air live on Sunday, Feb. 4, from 8 to 11:30 p.m. ET on CBS and stream on Paramount+.

Follow Justin Tranter on Instagram and Threads at @tranterjustin.

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