It seems like we’re talking about a common trend in a lot of our pieces here on Alternative Addiction. It’s ‘self-released this,’ ‘independent that,’ ‘we were forced to co-write,’ ‘they made us work with multiple producers…’ We’re not trying to bash anybody; this is just what’s being talked about every week with a different high-profile release. Nobody’s being targeted, the topic is just right in front of us and it’s impossible to not hit it. Take long time pop-punk band Hit the Lights; they signed a major label deal, worked on an album for months, co-wrote with several amazing artists, and then business got in the way and the band had to switch labels and ended up not even using most of the songs that they co-wrote. Hearing Hit the Lights frontman Nick Thompson talk about the writers and the producers the band worked with for their most recent release is staggering.

Thompson rattled through the impressive list in a recent interview; “We wrote with Kenny Vasoli from the Starting Line. We wrote with Ryan Key from Yellowcard. We wrote with Andrew McMahon from Jack’s Mannequin. We wrote with Tim Pagnotta from Sugarcult. We worked with producers like John Fields. We worked with the guys at the Blasting Room.”

“In that aspect, that was really cool for us to get the opportunity to do that and not pay for it and all of that stuff,” said Thompson reflecting on the experience. “That was awesome. The only real co-write song that we ended up using on the record, was a song with Ryan Key called, “Faster Now”; it’s kind of a slower one. It was a really cool experience and a lot of fun writing the song. It came together easy. We took that song and took it to the band and embellished on it further and got what you hear on the record.”

So, most of the songs that Hit the Lights teamed up with other writers on didn’t make it to their record… they ended up using one song. The list of who they wrote with doesn’t just include the names previously mentioned either. That’s an unfathomable thought in itself, when you pair that notion with the fact that the heads of the label didn’t want Hit the Lights to make a pop-punk record… that’s just ridiculous.

“The label set us up with these people, but we didn’t know what they wanted to hear from us,” said Thompson. “By the end, it was clear that they didn’t want a pop punk record or anything like that. They definitely didn’t want that. They would send us to other song writers, and they would hear five seconds of us on MySpace or FaceBook and then they’d want to write an All Time Low song for us.”

This was something that wasn’t beneficial for the band creatively.

“On the other side of the spectrum, it was kind of stupid in a lot of places too,” said Thompson. “We’re not pushing ourselves to do anything better right now, we’re trying to write cookie-cutter songs to fit a genre. That was something that kind of wore us down too and made us want to break out more and try new things.”

Despite the rough experience in trying to get the album released and being forced to jump through hoops, Thompson and Hit the Lights aren’t blaming the people they had sessions with.

We didn’t have that many bad experiences,” shared Thompson on co-writing. “We didn’t use a lot of the songs but I still think we could take things away, had a good time, and learned from stuff too, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

There’s no ill-will towards anybody in Thompson’s voice. He’s over it. But like any relationship that works out, there are some bitter feelings after the split. That resentment and where the band was at before signing their new deal helped Hit the Lights find a new label home with Razor & Tie.

“They were one of the people we talked to initially when we were looking for a new label,” Thompson said of Razor & Tie. “We ended up going with Universal and being stuck on that for so long and finally being able to get off… Razor and Tie was still an option when we got out. After the experience, we were in a spot where we were very against anything music industry based coming out of that. We had a very bitter taste in our mouths.”

“But going with Razor & Tie was like a 180 degree change in terms of staff and stuff. They’re not like a major but a big label they’re doing really well. They have this staff of people who are f______ on it. They know your stuff. You can call them by name. You can email them and they email you right back. It’s awesome that they still wanted to be a part of our new record. And the very fact that they let us do some unorthodox things like splitting the record in half and stuff… it’s a testament that they’re very artist friendly and they’re doing it because they like music too. They like to make money, but they also like the artists and respect what they want to do, which is f______ awesome.”

The songs that were co-written weren’t included on the album when putting everything together, that’s because the band wrote so many strong songs among themselves that ended up being outstanding.

“We have four really strong songwriters in the band,” explained Thompson when asked why the songs they wrote worked so well. “Sometimes that makes things hard but at the same time when we’re all together and somebody brings in an idea and we’re all picking at it and stuff and we get it to a place where everybody likes it. It’s more of a probability that others are going to like it too. If you have five guys with different opinions getting to actually like something there’s a good chance that other people are going to like it too…that’s unless we’re all super f_____-up on drugs… which we’re not [laughs.]”

“We still have our wits about us and I don’t think we tried anything on this record that was outlandish like ‘I can’t believe that’s Hit the Lights!’ At the same time, it’s a different enough approach that people can relate to where we took our sound. But, it’s still not a difference where we forget who we are. Our new songs still fit in our set with our old songs.”

This record has Hit the Lights doing things that they’ve never done before. Perhaps that’s just natural growth; perhaps it’s the theory that turmoil brings about great art. It could just be that they picked up a lot of great tricks from all the people they got to work with too. The fact that they wrote their most diverse and unique record without using all of those experiences is a tad puzzling, but it’s also pretty incredible.