Lindsey Stirling rose to prominence following a breakout appearance on Season 5 of America's Got Talent. She was voted off in the quarterfinals after Piers Morgan told her the world had no place for a dancing Dub-Step violinist. However she proved him wrong, firstly by attracting a lot of fans with her choreographed violin performances on her YouTube channel, then when her eponymous debut album reached #23 on the Billboard 200. The album also charted within the Top 5 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

This song was produced by longtime producer/collaborator of the Black Eyed Peas, DJ Poet, and released as the lead single from the Lindsey Stirling album. USA Today described the tune as "Mozart meets Skrillex."

Speaking with Artist Direct, Stirling explained the background to the song: "It has a pretty deep meaning," she said. "Basically, it's about creating inner beauty in yourself first. It all comes back to research being done by a scientist who studied the crystallization of water."

"Basically, he'd test out water and look at it at a magnified level as it crystallized in different environments," Stirling continued. "If it was in positive environments where good things were being spoken to it, the crystals came out beautiful. Whereas if negative things were said to these little vials of water, these crystals where these jagged shapes that were meaningless."

"When we surround ourselves eternally with positivity and we create healthy and positive environments and we do good things for people and ourselves, we're made up of 70 percent water so the crystals in your body create actual literal inner beauty," Stirling added. "That's what "Crystallize" is about. It's about taking control of your environment, creating beauty within yourself, and therefore creating beauty outside. I know that's pretty deep, but that's what it's about."

The music video was filmed in the ice castles of Silverthorne Colorado and was co-directed by Stirling with Devin Graham. One of the most viewed clips of 2012, it was #8 on YouTube's list of Top 10 Trending Videos for that year.

The song fused Stirling's classically trained violin expertise with dubstep rhythms. "I heard [Skrillex's] 'Bangarang' and thought, What is this crazy sound, and how can I do it with my violin?" she told Billboard magazine. "I wanted to make dubstep where my grandma would say, 'Wow, that's pretty.'"