Conan Gray’s new album “Kid Krow” (courtesy of Republic Records)
Did you know… that the upcoming debut album Kid Krow by Conan Gray grew out of his experiences as a mixed-race child in Texas? Kid Krow is the upcoming debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Conan Gray. It is scheduled to be released on March 20, 2020 through Republic Records. The album will include the singles “Checkmate”, “Comfort Crowd”, “Maniac”, and “The Story”, all of which have accumulated over 92 million streams online.
Gray told People that the album was inspired by his “pretty rough” childhood in Texas, explaining
When you’re young, it’s really hard to imagine life not always being hard. I lived in a really unsafe household, and life just wasn’t very good for me. And so, as a kid, I was just like, there’s no way that I’m gonna make it, there’s no way that I’m going to survive or there’s no way that there’s going to be anything more to my life than just dealing with pain.
Gray told Teen Vogue that growing up as a child of mixed race in Texas affected who he is as a person, as he felt that “he didn’t really belong anywhere.” He told Clash:
The record is a study of how I perceive the world. I talk a lot about my friends and people I’ve met touring over the past year. It’s me. I’m not the coolest person, but the album is me accepting the fact I’m weird and I don’t need to be anybody else. It’s also a chance to encourage others to embrace who they are and be unapologetic about it.
Songs and videos
Gray wrote “Comfort Crowd” whilst experiencing loneliness after moving to Los Angeles for college and leaving his friends behind in Texas. He told Paper, “I just really needed some company, that kinda company that didn’t require attention. That kinda company with someone who you’re so close to, you don’t need to say a single word to fill the ‘uncomfortable’ silence.” In the music video which has 2.2 million views, Gray is alone in an abandoned house, where he eventually manages to kill and bury a clone of himself. The cinematic music video features “horror-style setups of shovels and nosebleeds”. In a press release he said
I knew I wanted the video to evoke that mood; being alone with someone. Almost like spending time with yourself— so that’s how the video was born. I think that anyone in their adolescence can relate to feeling like they’re constantly having to kill themselves off and rebuild from scratch, so I wanted to make commentary on that theme as well. That’s what I wrote ‘Comfort Crowd’ about.
Read the whole article here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Krow
Photo: This is the cover art for Kid Krow by the artist Conan Gray. The cover art copyright is believed to belong to the label, Republic Records, or the graphic artist(s).