“There’s a certain part of me that’s weirdly more comfortable on tour than when I’m back home,” singer Conan Gray says.
The 26-year-old is in a hotel room in Reno, Nevada when he Zooms with The Hollywood Reporter, weeks into his latest tour, The Wishbone Pajama Show. Gray has been touring since he was a teenager, and the singer says he finds being on the road “oddly comfortable.” With the American leg of the tour now wrapped, he’s preparing to head to Mexico next month.
Fresh off the release of his fourth studio album Wishbone back in August, Gray’s been busy with the tour, as well as his recent performance at the VMAs in September. Wishbone, led by the single “Vodka Cranberry,” is the best encapsulation of who he is as a person, he says.
“I think that the music does a much better job explaining how much my life has changed and how much I think I’ve become myself,” Gray says. “I think the album is more me than any I’ve ever made before.”
Below, Gray speaks with THR about life on the road, subverting the pressure of fans’ reaction to his music and finding his complete self recording his new music.
How is the tour going?
Amazing. It’s truly a dream come true. It’s been incredible to be able to sing the songs off of Wishbone. I think the album means everything to me, so to actually see people singing songs back and seeing the way that these shows turned out, it’s very surreal. I’m three weeks in and kind of pinching myself, and it’s basically also almost over. It just kind of flew by.
You said you had some coffee and you played cards. What does your routine look like on tour?
I’ve been touring now since I was a teenager, so it has been a while. There’s a certain part of me that’s weirdly more comfortable on tour than when I’m back home. I think that there’s obviously certain parts of touring that are quite unconventional, but I do find it to be very oddly comfortable sometimes, and I really do enjoy some of the routine of it. You’re always doing the same thing, but in a different location. No matter where I am, whether I’m in Reno, Nevada or in Bogota, Colombia, I’ll wake up, have a coffee, play cards and write songs. I think the routine of that is what helps me feel a bit more normal about it all.
How does Wishbone represent where you’re at now?
It’s hard to encapsulate it into words. I think that the music does a much better job explaining how much my life has changed and how much I think I’ve become myself. I think the album is more me than any I’ve ever made before. I think that was mostly a result of growing up a bit. I think when you’re in your early adulthood, each year you’re truly a completely, immeasurably different person. You look back at every year before and you’re like, “Oh God, who the hell is that?” But I think with this album, this was the culmination of all of those transformations.
What do those transformations look like?
I looked back and I [realized] there’s bits and pieces of me from each one of those versions of myself that I actually truly love about that person, and I feel is just intrinsically who I am. Wishbone is a bit of everything that I’ve ever been. Everything that I’ve ever gone through; every person who I’ve ever had my heart broken by; every friend that I’ve lost; every friend that I’ve gained. It’s just everything that all kind of came together into a version of myself that I think… I do feel – hopefully, fingers crossed – a bit more solidified. I’d like to say the jello has gelatinized. I think I’ve been quite me for the past few years, and that’s the only reason why the album is what it is. I just feel extremely myself. My challenge with the album was I can do anything I want. I can stay anything I want, truly, as long as it’s just true to what I am and who I am as a person. Ultimately, I do think the album is that.
When you’re writing music, are you using it as an outlet to work through things? Or are you going into writing about things you’ve already worked through?
I think it’s cyclical for a lot of people and a lot of writers. Sometimes you have times where you’re very retroactively looking back at something, and I’ve definitely had phases like that. But Wishbone was the result of active participation in my life and was the result of truly play-by-play, emotion-by-emotion writing [of] everything that I had to say. The album was never supposed to exist in the first place. It was truly just that I had so much shit to get off my chest, and I was furiously writing. I was writing one, two or three songs a day. I’m insane. I just had to. I’ve always written music, since I was 10 or 11, I’ve always written. It’s always been how I journal, I guess. But there are definitely phases where you write more than others, and boy, I was writing a storm with Wishbone.
Do you feel the confidence that you had in this album has made the promotion and the rollout a little bit different than albums in the past?
I would say so because I feel like when you’re proud of something, the promotion feels really worth it. Not to rag on what promotion is, but I can’t say I love promoting. (Laughs). I do think that with Wishbone, I was so proud of it. I would’ve done anything to have people just listen. I really felt like I had something worth showing to the world, and it’s changed everything about my life. It’s changed everything about what it felt like to go and perform these songs in front of people who I know don’t know who I am and don’t care if I live or die. I was like, “you know what? Actually, I want you to hear this.” I felt very proud of it. It’s like when you’re a kid and you draw something that you think is cool and you want to show your siblings, I kind of felt that way about this album. I was like, “guys, wait, I think I have something to show you.”
Have you thought a lot about what comes next, or is it something you’re not trying to think about right now?
I’ve totally thought about it for sure. I think to me, this album, Wishbone was a great of reminder to me of what I love about making music. I wrote the album without thinking about the pressure of what people would think or how it may be received. It felt really gratifying to me once it came out. My goal is to just not be influenced by people’s reaction to Wishbone at all. Whether it’s the great things that people have to say about it or the negative things. All I want to do is just keep going down that path because it felt so right, and it felt so me, not to quote High School Musical right now.
