American YouTuber and Singer

Conan Gray | Biography

Singer Of Albums Like 'Sunset Season' and "Kid Krow'

• By Reena Chikanbanjar
• Update : September 14, 2021

---

Conan Gray is an American singer-songwriter who rose to fame after uploading his original songs on his self-titled YouTube channel. He is famous for singles such as ‘Idle Town,’ ‘Maniac,’ ‘Heater.’

Who is Conan Gray?

Conan Gray made his first YouTube channel when he was in fourth grade. He started making vlogs of daily life activities. He eventually uploaded cover songs and original songs. Gray rose to fame when he uploaded his debut single ‘Idle Town’ online in 2017. He then signed a record deal with Republic Records in 2018 and released his debut EP titled Sunset Season later in the same year.

After releasing multiple singles in 2019, he released his debut full-length album Kid Krow in 2020. The album included the popular singles’ Maniac’ and ‘Heater.’ In February 2021, he released the single ‘Overdrive,’ which has been viewed almost nine million times on his YouTube channel as of September 2021. Later in May, he released another single ‘Astronomy.’

Early Life

Conan Gray was born in Lemon Grove, San Diego, California, the United States, on 5 December 1998. His mother is from Japan, and his father is from Ireland. He has an older sister. When he was one-and-a-half years old, his maternal grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. His family relocated to Hiroshima, Japan, to care for his ill grandfather. He was then raised in Japan for two years, where he learned to speak Japanese fluently. Shortly after his grandfather passed, his family moved back to San Diego.

His parents divorced when he was three years old, and it had a detrimental effect on him. Gray and his sister moved many times to live with their parents, splitting between two different homes. Later, his father married another woman who had a son from a previous marriage. Things went even more complicated when he encountered a critical phase of his life when his family went through a financial crisis. He summarized the events that occurred at that time as “debt, foreclosure, angry rich people, angry poor people, eviction, running from the cops, child protection services, and a lot of yelling.”

He stayed in his room as a coping mechanism and filled all his time with drawing and singing. Later, his mother also dated and eventually married a man from Texas. His stepfather had two children from his previous marriage. Then he moved to Georgetown, Texas, with his mother at age 12.

Early YouTube Journey

Gray discovered YouTube while in elementary school. He subsequently fell in love with the YouTube community. Soon after, he started his first YouTube channel in his fourth grade and posted videos about his everyday life activities like playing with his pet. 

Later, he made his second YouTube channel in sixth grade, recording a video of a Thanksgiving day. “I never made videos for money because I didn’t even know that you could make videos for money. I never even made videos for fame. I just really really loved the process. I loved like coming up with the idea, bringing the idea to life, editing, posting, and like seeing the responses. It was just everything about it,” he shared. He then spent all the weekends throughout his middle school working on his YouTube videos. His channel gradually grew, and by the time he was in eighth grade, his channel had reached 10,000 subscribers. 

At age 15, Gray launched his new YouTube channel called ConanXConan on 14 January 2013. In his 2013 video entitled ’50 Facts About Me!!!’ Gray said, “There were a lot of family problems going on, and I became really depressed. YouTube has changed my life more than I could have ever imagined. It was just like I never expected anything to happen. I thought I would just make ringing videos, but now here I am, almost out of thousand on this channel and of almost six thousand on all my other channels.” 

In addition to the YouTube channel, he also found success on other social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and SoundCloud. In 2017, Gray moved to Los Angeles to study filmmaking at the University of California, Los Angeles. However, he continued his online presence on YouTube, adding original pop songs to his repertoire. As of September 2021, his YouTube channel has 4.11 million subscribers.

Musical Career

Engaged in cover songs from earlier, Gray first gained attention in 2017 when he self-released his debut single ‘Idle Town’ online. The song was well-received, which gained over 14 million streams on Spotify and 12 million views on his YouTube channel. He secured a record deal with Republic Records the following year and released the single ‘Generation Why’ in October of that year. In November, the same year, he released his debut EP titled Sunset Season, which contained five tracks, ‘Idle Town,’ ‘Generation Why’ and ‘Crush Culture,’ ‘Lookalike,’ ‘Greek God.’ The EP topped at No. 2 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart. He also released several non-album singles the following year, including ‘The King,’ ‘Checkmate,’ and ‘Comfort Crowd.’

In March 2020, Gray released his full-length debut album Kid Krow, which included platinum singles’ Maniac’ and ‘Heater.’ The album made a strong showing on the Billboard 200. Kid Krow debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, No. 2 on the Billboard Top Album Sales chart, and No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. It also scored ‘The Top New Artist Debut of 2020’ and ‘The Top Solo Full-Length Album Debut of 2020.’ The same year in October, he released the single ‘Fake’ with singer-songwriter Lauv. In 2021, he released the singles’ Overdrive’ and ‘Astronomy.’

Gray sold out three North American tours, two European tours, and other shows around the world. He was also featured by multiple media, including Vogue, Paper, I-D, MTV, Billboard, and The Fader. In 2019, Gray won the ‘Shorty Awards’ for Best YouTube Musician. In addition, he was nominated for several other awards.