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[-Jay-]

Killing Me is glorious too!

I found these interviews to be insightful regarding the album, so I thought I'd share them!

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Rolling Stone

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-fe...ven-1234998658/

Someone Broke Conan Gray’s Heart. He Says It Was Worth It
The singer opens up about his first breakup and his Eighties-inspired third album, Found Heaven
BY TOMÁS MIER

Conan Gray tried that whole “falling in love” thing for the first time last year. He got his heart shattered, and he’s still in the process of healing. But if you ask him, it was worth it — so much that he recommends doing it.

“I was expecting to be really bitter about it all,” he admits. “But now looking back at it, I’m just really happy that I got to experience any emotions at all. You come out the other side a completely different person, but also more yourself than you ever were.”

That first experience with heartbreak — real heartbreak, not the hypothetical one he used to sing about — became the center of his experimental, synth-drenched album, Found Heaven, out Friday. The LP is his third, and it’s a bold, left-field turn for the melancholic songwriter who has described himself as an “observer of life.” Now, he’s living life and singing about it as it happens.

“With [my last album] Superache, I got used to reminiscing and making up stories, whereas this album was a lot more present,” he says. “I’m just singing about exactly what was happening at the moment or what had happened this year. This whole album is letting myself feel all of my emotions and letting them hit me like a wave rather than running away from them.”

Sonically, he decided to go against what was expected of him (like the “Heather”-style balladry that made him a household name) and make music that really pushed him out of his comfort zone. He experimented with the more upbeat sounds and Eighties-style power ballads alongside super producers Max Martin and Ilya. He cites A-Ha, Cutting Crew, and David Bowie and a playlist he made of songs from 1984 as inspiration.

From his apartment in Los Angeles, Gray broke down five songs from Found Heaven:

Forever With Me
“Forever With Me” is about reminiscing about something that came and went. It’s me saying, “I have all these emotions about you. I really hated you for a while. I feel really angry. But at the end of the day, you’ll forever be a part of my life. You’ll forever be a part of my story. I learned how to love because of you. I learned how to hate because of you. With all the emotions aside, you’ll forever be with me. I’m not sorry that everything happened. I’m grateful that it all happened because we both learned so much and it just kind of is what it is.” You’ll always love an ex. You’ll always love who they were and what you learned from them. It’s a very interesting feeling because I think when you love someone, even if you break up, there’s always going to be love for them.

Bourgeoisieses
“Bourgeoisieses” is definitely the weirdest song on the album, and you can see that just from the title alone. I grew up in a bunch of different houses and was super poor at times and had just enough money to get by at other times. I always thought in my mind, “Wow, money is such a crazy thing and it can change people’s lives so completely.” I’ve always found it to be such a ridiculous conversation. And the name “Bourgeoisieses” is an intentionally misspelled plural of the bourgeoisie. I wanted to make a song that was jokingly saying I want to be part of the bourgeoisie, but not knowing anything about that so that’s why it’s misspelled. It’s a song poking fun at rich people and how ridiculous rich people can be and how ridiculous that world is and how futile and useless of a show of luxury it all is. It’s like “Oh, f*** you, rich people,” but from a previous version of me as a little kid that wanted to understand. The whole song is a massive joke. I don’t want anyone to take it seriously. We were laughing our asses off in the studio making that song.

Alley Rose
“Alley Rose” is my favorite on Found Heaven. It was the very last song that I wrote on the album. I think the last song on my albums always ends up encapsulating the whole album, which I find to be a huge relief. I went through a breakup last year. It was my first real breakup, and it was really, really eye-opening and interesting and formative and painful and all of these incredible huge emotions that I wasn’t expecting. I’d always turned off my emotions when experiencing pain, whereas this, I just let it hit me like a truck. I’d been dumped and I was in London. I was supposed to be there with this person that I was seeing and then I wasn’t. And all of a sudden I was like, “OK, I’m on Abbey Road right now and you’re not here with me. Where did you go? Why did things end up so bad?” When I was writing it, I was like, “OK, I should probably not name the song Abbey Road, the most famous album of all time.” So I decided to come up with a name that kind of sounded like Abbey Road. I wanted you to think of somebody when you listen to the song.

Fainted Love
“Fainted Love” is about accepting love that is not as great as you deserve. I think there’s been so many times in life that I’ve accepted lesser forms of love just for the sake of knowing that somebody loved me at all in some way. It’s a super damaging thing. You should not do that, but let’s be f***ing real. We’re human beings. We do it all the time. You see people who are in five-year relationships with people they should not be dating, but sometimes it’s better than no love. I wanted to write a song that encapsulated that feeling of driving to go see this person who never treats you right, but you still go back to them over and over because you know that you’d rather somebody than be alone. It’s not a play on “Tainted Love.” I’d originally written “Faded Love,” but then I was singing it and I was like, “This sounds weird. I don’t know why.” And so I changed it to Fainted Love because it sounded like “fated.” But that’s not what I’m singing about!

Boys & Girls
“Boys & Girls” is a song about how embarrassing it can be to have a crush on someone hot. Do you know this feeling? I’ve never heard this talked about in a song where it is so excruciatingly embarrassing to be in love with someone that everyone loves because you’re like, “Damn, I’m just like every other bitch. Your charms are working on me just like they work on everyone else and I feel so stupid because I know you’re just playing all of us, but I can’t help it. I do want you to love me even though I know everyone’s obsessed with you and you’re also possibly a terrible human being.”

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PAPER Magazine

https://www.papermag.com/conan-gray-found-heaven

How Conan Gray Found Retro Heaven
BY TOBIAS HESS

Conan Gray has never shied away from a big hook. On past hits like “Heather” and “Memories,” the 25-year-old megastar has secured his status as one of today’s go-to crooners, producing slices of big feelings pop music that work as well at a prom as they do blasting through a car’s speaker.

Today, he’s taking that anthemic sensibility through a bit of a time warp. His new album, Found Heaven, is a tour through vintage sounds, pulling on '80s synth-pop, '70s glam rock and new wave. It’s a fitting mode for Gray, whose epic sensibilities jibe well with a Bowie-esque swing. It doesn't hurt that he had Swedish pop superproducer Max Martin in tow on production.

“Working with Max and the rest of the MXM crew was like the most beautiful year of pop music boot camp,” Gray tells PAPER. One can hear the results of that master class in pop. On the album single “Never Ending Song,” his voice drops to the low register of an a-ha as he glides atop a swinging synth pulse. On album closer, “Winner,” he dons his Elton John jacket and belts out a timeless and sweeping plea for closure.

Gray chats with PAPER about how watching old movies inspired his new album, not needing privacy and prepping for his biggest tour yet.

There is a range of sonic references on “Found Heaven,” from glam rock to '80s synth pop. How did you find this album’s vintage sound?
It all started with a very formative night eating chili with my best friend. We absent-mindedly turned on Dirty Dancing …then of course by the end of the night we were in tears. Something about that night made me want to stay in that world a little longer. Crazy what Swayze can do to you.

Did you grow up listening to music from the '70s and '80s? Who are some of your biggest musical and visual inspirations from that time?
I did not. I was raised devoutly Christian and was not allowed to listen to “secular” music. I discovered all the great music of the past only now in my adulthood! Elton, Bowie, A-Ha, all favs.

The album is really open and vulnerable. How did you create an environment that was safe to explore those big emotions?
I’ve been writing music since I was 11. The thought of withholding information for privacy reasons is negligent since my entire life has been documented on the internet. Little too late to back away now!

You worked with the legendary Max Martin on this record. Tell me about that experience.
Working with Max and the rest of the MXM crew was like the most beautiful year of pop music boot camp. The swedes are genius, but more so just deeply passionate about making great music. That’s all it boils down to. It was an honor.

You’re gearing up for your biggest tour yet. What can you tease about the upcoming tour?
My main goal with Found Heaven on tour is to have everybody crying, screaming, laughing and dancing at one point in the night. Want it to feel like one big ridiculous slumber party.

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Nylon

https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/conan-g...album-interview

CONAN’S WAY
By rewriting the rules of confessional pop, Conan Gray is bringing mystique back.
by LAUREN MCCARTHY

(I haven't pasted the entire article, just what I considered to be most pertinent regarding the album)

“I’m not very good at parties. At the core of myself, I’m more an observer of life. … I think as a songwriter, it’s actually quite important to live your life in as much of a normal way as you can, or else, you start to write music that people don’t relate to.”

[Found Heaven is] a sharp turn from the Gen Z bedroom pop Gray helped define on Kid Krow and Superache, which were largely produced by his friend Olivia Rodrigo’s right-hand man, Dan Nigro. On Found Heaven, produced by Max Martin, Gray’s obsessions (romantic yearning, childhood trauma) are filtered through the jaded melodrama of ’80s pop production. These are sad songs you can dance to.

Rodrigo says it was inspiring to watch Gray push himself as an artist — once he let her listen to his music, that is. “Conan wouldn’t play me the new music for the longest time!” she writes in an email. “When I finally heard it, I was so pleasantly surprised. It’s so unlike anything I’ve ever heard him make before.”

Equally impressive is how Gray, who has been famous since he was a 15-year-old vlogger, has managed to keep the human subjects of his love songs a mystery. When Gray’s not writing confessional ballads, he is being paparazzied at the airport with Rodrigo. Still, nobody knows who he dates. It’s as if, in addition to the music, he is bringing pre-internet fame back too.

Gray was raised on contemporary Christian music in Central Texas until an iPod touch with internet access kick-started his self-education. “I would deviously listen to music like, ‘Oh, I’m going to hell for this, but, You’re hot, then you’re cold… ’” He credits [Doris] Sandberg [daughter of famed pop producer Max Martin] with turning him on to the sounds of Found Heaven. “She’s my closest, closest friend, and I love her so much. And she’s also a huge inspiration for this album because she just showed me unbelievable amounts of ’80s music,” says Gray. “And when I started working with Ilya Salmanzadeh and Oscar Holter and Max Martin, I mean, they’re all ’80s lovers.”

Sandberg and Gray met three years ago in Sweden, where he had traveled to work with Sandberg’s songwriter friends. “Conan has one of the greatest ‘ears’ in the music industry that I have ever encountered,” Sandberg says. “He thinks about music in a completely different way than anyone else I know.” As for his skill at parties, she admits, “at first I thought Conan was a little quiet and that he didn’t like me.” Now, though, “I think Conan thrives at a party when he’s with his close friends. Then he’s the life of the party.”

Gray has come to believe that the 1980s were “the last time that pop music was at its best.” He continues, “It was so unmitigated. There was no fabricated blasé about it. Everything was so intense, and they were not afraid to just do exactly what they wanted to do.” Plus, he adds, “I think maybe since I was so f*cking happy, I just wanted to listen to ’80s music all the time.”

When Gray started writing Found Heaven, he was actually having the experiences he had previously written about longing for. “I was falling in love for the first time, and it was unbelievable,” he says. “I’m someone who very much just spent my whole life trying really hard to mute my emotions, like, ‘Get yourself together.’ And it was the first time that I was overwhelmingly just allowing myself to feel everything.” He was also touring, experiencing adulthood, making new friends. “Everything in my life was opening up and blossoming and it was just unbelievable happiness.” He pauses: “And then, of course, I went and got my heart absolutely destroyed and then spent the next six months writing the album, the most depressed I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

Gray barely posts on social media anymore, but he still speaks with a YouTuber’s nonspecific candor. He is open about his feelings around the heartbreak, but keeps this former partner’s identifying features vague. “It was one of those situations where you were just friends, and then we were together one day, and you know where you could just feel something in the air?” he says. “All of a sudden, everything was different, and it was just this unanimous understanding like, ‘Oh, we are in love with each other. Aren’t we?’” (Yes, they’re still in the same friend group, and yes, it’s awkward now.) Gray is never cagey when discussing his emotions, and you get the vibe that, even if he had never gotten famous, he’d still be this way, private yet vulnerable.

Gray says contradictions like these can be a source of power and inspiration. Lately, he’s been giving himself permission to let the emotional highs and lows of the past two years express themselves not just as lyrics but as sounds. On Found Heaven, there are up-tempo bops about the most painful heartbreak and theatrical ballads spun from small revelations. “It was the first time I ever had fun making an album, which I hope people can hear,” he says.

What better way to let loose than to give up on explaining yourself? “I found a lot of freedom in not having to define who I am in such black-and-white terms,” he says. “As I kid, I was like, I’m this type of person, and I’m perfect. I get perfect grades, and I’m perfect, perfect, perfect. Now, I’m like, I’m just a person. Some nights I dance with my friends and have so much fun, and then other nights, I sit at home and I play Fortnite.”