Conan Gray - Winner
Across 2018 and 2019 Georgetown, Texas’ Conan Gray put out a number of wistful, acoustic-pop songs about the sugariness of treasured friendships, stealing warm nights playing superheroes, the adventure of growing up and the stillness of small towns, in between making homey, fresh-peachy videos for his Youtube channel subscribed to by more than a million.
On 2020’s Kid Krow, Gray followed the arrows of authenticity and age to compose a canonic text of sensitive and dissident late-adolescent auteurship that includes a cathartic tragedy of unspeakable love unfolding across gut-wrenching strings on the viral sensation ‘Heather’, a retro-inspired calling out of a too-cool intimate partner that comes crying back at night on ‘Maniac’ a just criticism of the rich and the hollow on ‘Affluenza’ that plays with trap stylistics, and an orchestral ballad trying to say goodbye for the last time to a story that always ends in heartbreak on ‘The Cut That Always Bleeds’.
2022’s Superache, with sweeping instrumentals and sorrowful melodies, dug into the lingering phantoms of heartache, savouring the nourishing bittersweetness that it gifts, from ‘People Watching’ on observing blushing couples while being utterly alone to ‘Astronomy’ on a divine connection that cannot stay because life will not let it be to ‘Yours’ on dying for the staying affection of somebody that would leave even if one gave them the world and ‘Jigsaw’ on transforming each centimetre of oneself only for your beloved to be disappointed, further establishing him as the Byronic prince of dark pop.
Taking the singles in anticipation of his forthcoming project, ‘Never Ending Song’ and ‘Winner’, as evidence, Conan is entering his gunslinging, musical-ace era, reckoning the pain of the past with a truly coming-of-age philosophy and growing into a masterful sound that sews together edge and performance.
On ‘Never Ending Song’, released in May, Gray’s Byronic character adorns himself in the dramatic clothes of a New-Wave Romantic: a darkly-tinged aural base, a nexus of electronic beats like rapid strikes of lightning, digitized keyboards, dramatic drums and controlled vocals create a nostalgic soundscape that tugs at the boundaries of his discography up until this point. By borrowing the aesthetics of a devilish 1970s-gentleman as Conan does in this earlier singles’ music video, the singer-songwriter may be drawing on the strength of such historical figures as he ages, as in the single he recognizes with laser-like precision and unsentimental reason the toxic pattern of the relationship with someone that he shares a history with, yet he is tender to the wisps of warmth that this someone still sparks.
If ‘Never Ending Song’ contemplates whether healing wounds could or should be forgiven, ‘Winner’ throws the first knife at somebody that should have taken care of Gray when he was a child and who has over the years rubbed scabbing wounds to keep them festering and punched in fresh bruises to remind the singer-songwriter that they are out there and sore about all of the achievements that he has to be proud of. Time is up on Conan’s goodwill.
While for years romanticism is the approach by which Gray has come to know devastating experiences in his lifetime (as is natural for many poets), on ‘Winner’, he dissects, as blood pours and sweat builds up on his face, the cruelties that his words; addressee has subjected him to. Acrid resentment over abandonment at an early age is the first emotion that he articulates, biting scrutiny of the addressee’s cycles of personal and moral failures follows, then unceremonious announcements that they will forever win gold on the podium of reducing him to nothing fold over one another. Over and again, vulnerability and apology are put in their places, so rage can grace its long-awaited presence.
Sonically, ‘Winner’ is closer to Conan’s classic repertoire, with ambrosially sullen piano playing and melody and acrobatic vocal and musical arrangements that ebb and leap forth. The compositional scope of the artist’s latest single is akin to a masterpiece work in a theatrical production - sombre, steadily building verses rest next to dramatic orchestral choruses, and as with any inspired piece of musical theatre, breaks of musical excess rip from the seams to stunning effect. Each aural element is executed with razor-sharp perfection. Tactfully placed electric guitars in the verses and explosive spaces in the composition contribute with the grandeur and elegance of the classic British band Queen; the drumming evolves between intricately growling and powerfully crashing; Gray’s emotive piano-playing is as agile as a classical pianist and his voice is pure on the quiet, delicate notes to the soaring, operatic notes, this purity shown starkly when opposite volumes of vocal lines compound on top of each other to form meteoric harmonies.
Listen to Conan Gray’s ‘Winner’.
