Last week, pop star Conan Gray launched his vibrant third album Found Heaven — and shortly earlier than, he stopped by Billboard News to debate every part from falling in love for the primary time to working with Max Martin to convey that feeling to life.
“It very much affected how I made the music,” says Gray, who additionally shares that “this whole album is highs and lows.”
He says he began the ideation course of throughout his Superache Tour practically two years in the past. As he recollects, after every efficiency he would retreat to the basement “because there’s always a piano in the basement of these theaters I was playing… that’s when I would notice these different themes I was writing about.”
He later tapped the MXM songwriting and manufacturing crew of Max Martin, ILYA and Oscar Holter to assist flesh these numerous themes out, saying they “really opened up my eyes and wings to all of the different sides of myself that I could try out. … They wanted to push me to do something that was the whole array of me.”
And whereas Found Heaven does boast power-pop hits like “Never Ending Song” and “Lonely Dancers,” the album additionally options extra intimate songs like “Forever With Me,” album nearer “Winner” and standout monitor “Alley Rose.” As Gray says, “When I first recorded [‘Alley Rose’], I recorded it in the same voice as the rest of the album, a bit more energetically. And then I was like, ‘Wait, I need to not do that. I need to sing it as calm and tender as possible — each song requires a different part of me. … I feel lucky that people give me the space to do both.”
Gray additionally opened up concerning the love that impressed a lot of this album — and the heartbreak he needed to course of quickly after. As he tells it, after flying to London for his or her scheduled meet-up, he landed to a textual content finally ending the connection. And but, he wouldn’t change a factor about his experiences surrounding Found Heaven — and his necklace of a star cutout inside a teardrop is a reminder of precisely that.
“In all the things that make you cry, the happiest moments of your life and the saddest moments of your life, there is a magic in the fact that you even got to experience it at all,” says Gray. “I’ve spent so many years of my life hiding in my room and not doing anything and being so afraid of ever getting hurt or rejected or feeling bad, that I ended up living no life. I kept this on my neck the whole time I was making this album [as a reminder] that I have to live my life.”
To hear what else Gray mentioned of his newest album, watch the total interview above.
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