With his fourth album, 2025's poignantly romantic
Wishbone,
Conan Gray captures the goose bumps and quivering gut-ache emotions that come with falling deeply in love and getting your heart broken. He purportedly recorded many of these songs in secrecy as a way to get over a breakup, only realizing along the way that he was in fact making the follow-up to 2024's
Found Heaven, an unassuming process that perhaps lends the album an emotional immediacy and creative freedom it might not otherwise have had. Helping in the process was longtime producer/collaborator
Daniel Nigro, along with
Ethan Gruska,
Noah Conrad,
Elvira Anderfjärd, and
Luka Kloser. The results are some of the most literate and affecting songs the onetime YouTuber has written. It's reminiscent of 2022's
Superache in terms of production sophistication, but smartly shifts away from the sugary, '80s synth-and-dance-pop dynamism that marked 2024's
Found Heaven. There's an organic warmth to the production, as on "This Song," where he frames a tenuous summer romance with Baroque strings and crystalline guitar harmonies. Similarly, on "Romeo," he evokes
Beck's playful '90s alt-rock with punchy mariachi horns and female backing vocals. Many of the songs, like "Class Clown" and "Vodka Cranberry," evoke a dewy, springtime psych-folk atmosphere.
Wishbone is a complete arc, capturing both the elated, tidal-wave euphoria of falling in love and the bittersweet comedown off that wave. And it's not just the feelings of love, but the tastes, the smells, and the thrilling sweaty intimacy of being close to another person in every sense that
Gray embodies. He conjures that sublime power pop bliss on "Caramel," singing "Your cigarette breath thick on your open mouth/Maple and amber clouds and coffee grounds when I think of it now." It's also unapologetically Queer with lyrics that hint at same-sex partnerships but remain totally relatable for anyone who has been in love.
Gray diaristically details what can sometimes feel like real-time experiences with a person who sometimes acknowledges him but more often hides their feelings. He underscores this vibe from the start on "Actor," a song title that reveals both his lover's possible occupation and deceptive nature, singing "When you meet a girl on a TV show there's a side of you that she'll never know." It's these kinds of agonizing scenarios that play out on
Wishbone, each song bursting with amorous longing and a shimmering pop melodicism, all pushing towards the inevitable heartbreak. Yet
Gray is never bitter or angry. On the contrary, he basks in the warm afterglow of love's memory, a wish answered. ~ Matt Collar
