The first song Conan Gray wrote so far was called “Those Days” and was about a time spent in a small Texas town called Rockdale. (Population: 5,505.) “The slogan was” one hour away from everything, “and his main activity was directed at Wal-Mart,” he recalled in a recent video interview.
He called some coveted lines from his apartment in Los Angeles. His long, elastic hair was pulled tightly behind him, squinting as if he wasn’t sure he understood it correctly. I shouted your name / but hope you don’t really care how I was at the time. “
Then he paused to admit the lyrical soap opera: Gray was 12 when he wrote them, 7 when he lived in Rockdale, and he adopted such a knowledgeable perspective. The idea of doing it immediately caused laughter.
“At that time, when I was seven,” he said in exaggerated prosperity.
Gray, now 23, felt very deep at such a young age, but it’s not so surprising. Over the past few years, he has spoken openly about his life, singing about the most annoying emotions known to young people: unrequited love and the special anxiety of admiring potential lovers. It has gained a wide range of viewers across media platforms. far away. (One of his more popular songs, “Heather,” is about the envy of a woman dating his crush.) In this model, he uses the internet to expose their hearts. The traditional barrier to entry by the music industry.
But with his ascendant tenor and boy band looks, Gray set himself away from the puck at a reflexive distance in his songwriting. He has the instinct to perceive the big picture and accept the melancholy cooldown that inevitably follows a broken heart, rather than marinated by his own feelings.In a song called “your” From his new album “Superache” released on Friday, his voice soars and hits painful notes as he sings about detente forced by unbalanced romance. Change your mind / but you are still mine. “
“One of the reasons we make Conan is to connect directly with this generation of children who grew up on the internet,” said Eddie Wintle, who has been managing Gray since 2016 with partner Collet Patnaud. increase. As he continues to do that, he feels that the sky is the limit when it comes to what he can achieve. “
His emotional strength was sometimes overwhelming, and Gray said the new LP was “not a fun album to make.”
“My first album was a lot easier because I was just introducing myself.” Hello, my name is Conan. At the age of 19, I once had a broken heart, “he said. .. “But the second album was like,’Oh God, now I have to tell people who I really am.'”
Gray’s childhood, born to a Caucasian father and a Japanese mother who split at the age of three, in Lemon Grove, California, was far-reaching. After spending several years in Japan, he stopped by several other small towns and eventually landed in Georgetown, Texas. His presence as one of the only Asian students in his middle school was often “brutal.” Music provided a way of self-expression. He wrote “Those Days” after watching a video of Adele singing in her bedroom and wondering if she could write a song from her bedroom as well. YouTube was different. As a teenager, he began recording videos about his life with the following titles: “50 facts about me !!!” When “School routine” With a cover played on his guitar.
“When I lived in a random town in the middle of Texas, what else were I supposed to do, so was I just doing that?” Gray said. “I didn’t have a real gauge of the fact that real people are watching these videos.”
By the fourth grade he was able to attract hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but things changed dramatically in 2017 when he self-liberated. “Idol Town” A flashy pop song about expecting nostalgia for life in his small town. The accompanying video combines Gray and his friend’s home footage with his shots running through the local retired community, from “a duct-taped tripod behind my mother’s Toyota.” It was recorded. It exploded online, and with subsequent success, he eventually dropped out of his freshman year at UCLA and signed a deal with Republic Records.
“They saw what we saw,” Wintle said. “It’s the belief that he can be a huge star, and they were very open to making sure he wasn’t trying to shape him into something he wasn’t.”
Gray’s debut LP, Kid Krow, was released in March 2020, just before the pandemic was forced to shut down globally. The scheduled tour was canceled and, like many others, Gray spent a lot of time indoors alone. “It was two years that I thought too much,” he said. “Superache” was recorded fragmentarily over 18 months and culled from about 250 songs.
“It took me a while to figure out what we were making,” said Dan Nigro, who produced “Superache” and worked on almost all of Gray’s post-YouTube music. One turning point came when we completed the singles “Astronomy” and “People Watching” in February 2021. “It felt like a new iteration of Conan, who was more mature than Kid Krow,” said Nigro, who also produced Olivia Rodrigo’s breakout album “Sour.” “It gave us confidence like,’OK, we have the beginning of something really special.'”
“People Watching,” which Gray praises and longs for a happy couple’s relationship, was inspired by a real-life pair he eavesdropped on in college. “I want to feel all that love and emotion / like I have an attachment to the person I hold,” he sings, his voice breathtakingly crescendo as the music swells behind him. To reach.
“I’ve always been a life observer much more than a participant,” he said. “I have been able to witness other people living their lives, especially in the last few years.”
But there is no doubt that in recent months many listeners have longed for his rapidly changing life. As the music industry stepped out of the pandemic blockade, Gray stepped into the spotlight, played in Cochera, and joined Met Gala in silver disco ball pants and tall white platform shoes.Taylor Swift’s super fan grew up and he’s now Called personally To promote her music, and also enjoy a well-known friendship with Rodrigo.
Nigro emphasized that many other young artists were unnecessarily influenced by outside voices, saying that both artists were “doing what they wanted to do with their music.”
But Gray spoke openly about tackling self-consciousness and feelings of suspicion as he walked his way in the music industry. “In the last few years, I’ve grown up and realized that if I don’t want to be this fainted person, I have to make myself a mistake,” he said. “Dan and my friends said,’Who cares? It’s better to be sad than to feel nothing.”
“Superache” is a record of that annoying process. The title is intended to be a little interesting, leaning on the grand feelings associated with obsessive-compulsive broken hearts. “When it’s a real feeling, it’s just a depiction of exactly what’s going on, so it can never be too dramatic,” Gray said. “All I really want is not to be a little obsessed with all the emotions people are feeling right now.”