In school, Gray was often bullied by his mostly white classmates, sometimes for his mixed-race identity. He moved “about a billion” times, as he said in a 2016 video, sharing tiny apartments with his sister and mom the trio once even shared a queen-size bed. Following the split, Gray and his sister divided their time between his parents. His dad’s military career sometimes kept him apart from the family, and when Conan was three, not long after the family returned to the States, his parents divorced. Gray was born in Southern California, but soon his mother moved the family to her native Japan to care for her ailing father. That childhood was filled with volatility. I’m in a lot of pain,’” he says in a deep old-man voice, before letting out a giggle. “But then with this album, it’s like, ‘I had a really bad childhood. My heart has been broken before, when I was a teenager,’” he says, shaking an invisible hand. “With Kid Krow, I was very much like, ‘Hi, I am Conan, nice to meet you. The album marks a shift from the simple and angsty lyricism of his debut. “It felt like scraping my ribs of any last bits of meat.” “Writing this album was miserable, and that’s why it ended up being a super-accurate depiction of my life,” he says. It acknowledges his romantic failure, rips apart the monthslong sulk that followed it, and opens up like never before about his childhood. (Up until a few months ago, he says, he “didn’t really date.”) Due June 24, his excellent new album, Superache, goes deeper. But Kid Krow was a mere introduction to the intricacies of a boy trying to navigate the mysteries of young love. He’s a songwriter with a penchant for brutal honesty and a natural ability to connect to a young generation of overthinkers. Sitting in bed is rapidly becoming less of an option these days, since Gray is poised for big things this year. Or perhaps it’s that Gray reached a new level of fame during a pandemic (his debut, Kid Krow, came out in March 2020) that rewarded him for, as he puts it, “just sitting in bed.”
Maybe it’s some impostor syndrome kicking in for the Japanese-American Swiftie, who survived a tough childhood in Middle of Nowhere, Texas, that could’ve easily halted his dreams of becoming, well, anything. We’re talking about a platinum-selling pop star who just put on a captivating set in the blazing desert sun on Coachella’s main stage, then walked down the Met Gala red carpet in an angelic Valentino outfit that matched his delicate and gender-fluid fashion.Ĭonan Gray's Second Album 'Superache' Is About That Pain That Lingers for YearsĬonan Gray Details the Downfall of a Toxic Relationship on 'Jigsaw'įour Tet Wins Higher Royalty Rate After Settling Legal Battle With Domino Recordsīut, chatting with Gray - today wearing a black bomber jacket over a thrifted baseball tee, and black sunglasses in his hair to keep the curls out of his eyes - you get a sense of why he’s seen his life that way. “Non-participator” seems like a weird way for this particular 23-year-old to describe himself.
“I feel like I’m just an observer of life.” “I just watch people,” he says with a shrug, sipping a cold brew (no milk, no sugar) outside of his favorite coffee shop in L.A.’s Eagle Rock neighborhood. A “non-participator,” as he puts it, the kind of person who lives vicariously through those around him. Jewelry by Presley Oldham.Ĭonan Gray says he’s always been a watch-from-the-sidelines kind of guy. Conan-Gray-online-opener - Credit: Photograph by Justin J Wee for Rolling Stone.
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