It’s a tale as old as the early 2000s: a young boy escapes his small town via the internet. Next thing he knows, his YouTube videos have launched him to burgeoning stardom.
This type of DIY, internet fame may be a new model, but it’s an increasingly effective one. [Conan Gray](https://www.instagram.com/conangray/?hl=en), a kid from everywhere and nowhere, has been building a following since the age of nine. Now, fresh off the release of his debut album, “[Kid Krow,](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mvnCMI9XFrXuA83z36Ee808ctpL_K25JI)” he’s officially a name you should know.
The entire course of Gray’s career can be tracked through the endless aisles of the world-wide web, from his first YouTube videos with his gecko and pre-teen art, to his popular lifestyle channel, to the point where it actually made sense for him to leave behind a full ride to UCLA in favor of a career as a musician. This unending documentation of a young person’s life, through every relatable moment of childhood, offers a unique, and uncharacteristically charming, glimpse into modern celebrity.
Gray is well known, with millions of followers across social media platforms and 500 million streams pre-album release, for putting out fun but emotive pop songs. They’re the type that might get stuck bouncing around in the back of your head, albeit in a completely non-annoying way.
When we had a chance to catch up with Gray about his album drop, he was three weeks into social-distancing for COVID-19, and drinking coffee out of a Texas mug, which he claimed was “very on brand” for him. Read the rest of our conversation below.
**What inspired you to begin songwriting and doing music? You were on YouTube for a while before you started releasing any songs.**
Well, I started making videos when I was nine years old, so I was basically a toddler. Then I started writing songs when I was 12, so I wasn't quite a teenager yet, but I was very, very young. Honestly, I started doing all of that just because I was really, really bored and I really wanted an outlet. I wanted to do something with my time and with my life. I was just living in suburbia. I grew up in the middle of Texas basically, just a small town, an hour away from Austin. I was just bored and I had no friends cause no one wanted to be friends with the new kid. So I just wrote songs and made art.
**You've lived in Texas, California, outside the country even. How did living in all those different places influence your music? Everywhere has a little bit of a different music scene.**
Honestly I think the main thing that moving around did to me growing up was just, that made me really, really shy. I was born in a town called Lemon Grove, which is like a suburb of San Diego. I moved a bunch of times in San Diego. I lived in Hiroshima, Japan for a bit and my dad was in the military. I lived in California some more. I've lived in Arizona, lived in a bunch of cities in Texas. So I was always, always, always the new kid, like all the time. And once I got to Texas, I wasn't just the new kid; I was the Asian kid because there were so few Asians in my whole entire middle school or high school. So I just felt really, really out of place all the time. I felt super displaced and very confused about what was going on in my life. So I really just kind of became this very shy person who much more observed the world, than participated in it. I think that because of that, all of my songs are kind of like me studying how people work from afar. Even on the album, I think you can tell I'm very shy and introverted in reality. A lot of the things are written from a perspective of like, humans are so weird and so interesting and we react to things so oddly. That's what I write about usually.
**It's interesting that you say you're very shy because you're sharing a lot about yourself online, stuff that even people who wouldn't say they were shy, probably wouldn't talk about. It's a lot about your childhood and things that you've been through. Do you know why you find it easier to talk about those things online?**
I think any internet kid can agree that if you're raised on the internet, it almost feels like everything you do on the internet isn't real, even though it's very much, super, super real. I started putting stuff up on the internet about my life when I was nine years old. So I really don't even remember a time before I started telling the world everything about myself, even though they did not ask! Nowadays, I'm super aware of the fact that when I say something on the internet or when I do something, it's going to be on the internet forever and hundreds of thousands of people are gonna see it. But when I was younger, I just wasn't aware of that, so I put so much on the internet and now that the internet knows so much, there's really nothing I can hide anymore. So might as well just say everything that I need to say.
**Do you regret that a little bit?**
Yeah, part of me is like, "Dang, I wish I didn't say literally everything I ever thought on the internet," cause I've definitely said some pretty dumb things in my life. But another part of me is like, from a songwriter's perspective, the best way to relate to someone is to tell them the truth, because anyone can relate to a human emotion no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, what childhood you had, how rich you are. You can relate to a feeling, because we're human. We all act like we're all so different, that we come from different backgrounds and things like that, but we all feel a lot of the same things. I think that that's really important to actually, genuinely do when you're writing a song or else people are not gonna be able to relate or not be able to understand.
**I totally agree. A lot of people think the way to be relatable is to almost go more generic, but a lot of the time it's those real specifics that end up affecting people.**
Totally! Every time I hear a songwriter mention a really specific memory, it always hits so much harder than just being like, I was sad and you broke my heart. Like, okay sir, I agree. Yeah, I was sad, but what sweater were you wearing? You know?
**You've said you're a big fan of Taylor Swift and that's a very Taylor Swift sort of vibe, to mention what sweater you were wearing in a song.**
Yeah. I always like think about her song "[All Too Well](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWp92atlmsM)"-
**Yes, the scarf!**
—where she mentions the scarf. Then you're just like, "That god damn scarf!" You know, it hits so well and she's definitely someone that I've looked up to my whole life because she's been in the public eye for so long, but to this day still says everything that she she needs to say in her songs. I think that's so important.
Cover art for “Kid Krow” by Dillon Matthews
**Usually, when we watch people online it's after they're famous and after they've gone through the whole journey of blowing up. But you really shared the process of becoming someone who is known in the music industry. What was it like to experience that online and to share that with your fans? Has the relationship with your fans changed as you've became more popular?**
It's interesting because it's the direct result of the fans that I'm doing well. I shared so much of myself on the internet, and I just kind of did my own thing. And because of it, they were the ones who had a direct effect on my life. They got to see me basically grow up on the internet. So it's a really interesting dynamic because a lot of them I've known since I was like 16 or 17 years old and I'm 21 now. It's like a friend group and then there's all these little cliques inside the friend group and there's all these little things and it's like, our dynamic is so interesting to me. They're like my friends in the sense that they hold me accountable for things. They let me know if they don't like something, they let me know if they liked something. We're literally just a friend group and they are the reason why I got to share the process of me becoming bigger, because they made me bigger.
**Do you think that you're still able to have those personal, one on one relationships with people?**
Absolutely. I literally am in a million of their group DMs. I pop in every once in a while and just say something stupid. I know a lot of them by name. One of my fans has been to every single show since the very beginning and her name is Andrea. She was first in line for my first show ever and I still talk to her on Twitter literally every single day. It's just stuff like that, you know. I know these people by name, even though these days I go on stage and there's 2000 of them in the crowd, I know so many of them by name.
**I love that. I think that's amazing. I'm also wondering what a typical day for you looks like now. I know you were at UCLA for a while. Are you still at UCLA?**
No. So I was at UCLA for one quarter, or basically part of a quarter, and then during that quarter I was flying out to New York and I got signed in that quarter and then I started touring the next quarter. So basically was done by then. Technically, legally I'm still a student but I haven't been to class in like a year.
**Well, keeping the options open.**
Who knows, I am hyper aware of the fact that everything in the music industry is constantly changing. I might be literally irrelevant by the time this interview comes out. So, I always have college as my option. Education is important.
These days, I still go back onto campus and will eat with my college friends in the dining halls. There's definitely part of me that wishes I had that college experience because I didn't really get to have that much of it. By the time I got to college I was already doing the whole like “Hannah Montana” process of going to class but then also going to the studio anytime I had free time. I wasn't going to college parties and dating and stuff like that. I didn't really get the opportunity to do that. So sometimes I'll go back onto campus and see my friends and ask them how their lives are and act like a college student because it makes me feel very cool.
**So what do you do in a week, or a day, to be a musician?**
It kind of depends on the timing, so if it's album release time, like it is now, what I'm doing most days is just interviews and talking to people and working on different things. Any time that I'm home or anytime that I have free time, I'm writing songs. I literally write two or three songs a day if I have the time to. It's just what I do. It's not like a job to me. Writing songs is my way of coping with everything that's happening. Not that it's a bad thing, what's happening, it's just really overwhelming at times. I write so much, so, so, so, so, so much. For "Kid Krow" alone, I wrote like 200 songs in just the past year. So I guess my quote unquote job as a musician is to write songs.
**How was the process of recording an album different now that you're with a label and you have more resources behind you? I read an interview that said you were recording songs with a microphone that was taped to a lamp and I'm assuming that's not the same process you have now.**
I guess my surroundings have changed a lot since everything kind of picked up, but the process of me writing songs and producing them is exactly the same as with the \[[Sunset Season](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mgsLYeoboUpEBCeAPYeXZ09BSCn3e6yoA)\] EP. With the EP, I produced all of it with my producer Daniel Nigro, who recorded it all in his garage. With the whole entire album, I wrote all the songs by myself just like I did with my EP, and then I went and I recorded all of it in my producer's garage. It's exactly the same even though now there's a couple more eyes on me. The process of making the songs is exactly the same because I really like working with Dan. I think we work really well together because we're genuinely really good friends. Also, the process of me making music with the EP that resonated well with people was something that I just wanted to make sure I kept. I didn't feel the need to change anything now that there's more people. People resonated and related to the music I was making out of my bedroom and out of Dan's garage. So why would we change anything.
**And with the imagery, the album sleeve and the press photos and everything for this album, do you have a big hand in the visual side of things? I know that you said you draw a lot of the artwork, but is everything mostly your vision?**
Yeah, literally all of it is my vision. I think that's why it took me quite a while to make the album as well, because every single, little thing was really up to me to decide what I wanted and what I needed to do. Even with the music videos, all of those music videos I wrote. I wrote their prompts, and even in the beginning I would literally edit all the music videos by myself and color them by myself. Then the album artwork came off of a sketch that I did, that I then bought to my photographer, Dillon Matthews. We took a photo off of my drawings. All of the things are just me being like, "I had this idea. It might sound really crazy, but I just need to do it." Also, I just tend to be a bit of a control freak, especially creatively, because it's one of the only things that I can control. I can't control how people are gonna react to the music at all, but I can control what I want the music to feel like and look like. It goes down to me literally just drawing every little thing, drawing the merch and drawing the font on the artwork and drawing like literally everything. I love to do that. That's why I do this. That process is what I'm obsessed with.
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Photo Credit: Brian Ziff
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