“I was maybe six or seven and it’s literally a song about the toilet. “There’s one in particular that my sister still has on her flip phone from when we were living somewhere in the middle of California,” he said. Sometimes he’d even find inspiration from plumbing. Gray had a youthful habit for crafting songs from billboard slogans he saw on the highways, or shampoo bottle labels. I was very bored and I was living in the middle of Texas and I had a really rough childhood, so I had a lot to say.” Nobody cared, and I did it because I loved it. “Nobody gave a flying fuck that I was making songs. “I started writing songs and putting them up online when I was twelve,” said Gray recently on the phone from Los Angeles. Even though his debut album Kid Krow doesn’t drop until this Friday, his available songs have already been streamed on over 400 million times across various platforms.īut for people still figuring out who, exactly, Billie Eilish is, Gray might look like just another model off the record industry’s Gen Z conveyor belt of sad pop. On YouTube Gray now has 1.8 million subscribers there’s another 1.4 million on Instagram. A selfie with The 1975’s lead singer Matty Healy sent Gray’s fans into a tizzy, and he’s opened California dates for Panic! At the Disco. Noah Cyrus and Tommy Dorfman count themselves as fans. V of the K-Pop group BTS has cited Gray as an inspiration for the band’s future music. Halsey namechecked Gray as a dream collaborator during an IG Live session. While Gray might not have the general population name recognition as the rest of the artists in the group photo yet, he’s already something of a superstar to the under-25 crowd. He signed with UMG subsidy Republic Records in 2018 and may just be their next big thing. In January, Gray, now 21, stood alongside artists like Shawn Mendes, Justin Bieber, and Beck at the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony for Universal Music Group’s CEO Sir Lucian Grainge. “Ah, moving on, I’m going to start crying if I think about it,” Gray sighed. That would be everything I’ve ever wanted in my entire life.” There’s a quick jump cut, as per YouTube vlogging standards. “Oh my god, that would be a dream come true if I got a record deal.

“Well, if you want me to come out with an EP or something, maybe start emailing my video to a ton of record companies,” he replied. In between answering queries like “When did you start singing?” (answer: “since inside the uterus”) and “eggplants or buttholes?” (eggplants), he fielded comments playfully asking when he might release an album or go on tour.

Like tens of thousands of teens, he had attracted a small but active following on YouTube by uploading short vlogs with titles like “SOCIALLY AWKWARD ?” and “Cat Farts.” Recently, he had begun uploading covers of popular songs as well, like a ukulele-assisted rendition of Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love.” While recovering from an illness, he solicited questions from his fans. In 2014, a 14-year-old Conan Gray sat on his bed in Georgetown, a city of about 70,000 in the heart of Texas, recording himself.

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