CONAN GRAY TUGS AT THE HEARTSTRINGS AND HUGS EVERY FRIEND WITH NEW NOSTALGIC SINGLE ‘HOLIDAYS’

SINGLE REVIEW | CONAN GRAY – HOLIDAYS by Martha Munro

It’s news to nobody that 25-year-old American singer-songwriter Conan Gray is the pop-king of Gen-Z and has been proving it continuously over the last five years. After topping charts and touching hearts across the globe with the release of his wildly successful sophomore album Superache in 2022, Gray toured his new work and era on a trip around the world, selling over 300,000 tickets and performing in some of the most legendary venues in music history, namely LA’s The Greek Theatre and London’s Eventim Apollo. And this year, he’s back and blazing with his latest critically acclaimed April album Found Heaven and a whopping world tour to match.

But Conan Gray’s 2024 doesn’t stop there. To follow Found Heaven, Gray released his first ever festive track Holidays on 18th October, bringing a Phoebe–Bridgers-esque melancholy and his own reflective, harmonic style to the same-y selection of Christmas songs we get every year. But Holidays is by no means a downer; in fact, this track champions the warm fire of friendship amidst the coldest storms and, above all, showcases Gray’s unfailing ability to reimagine a theme and draw out its most emotional, heartfelt and raw aspects.

Gray’s experience of the holiday period is a conflicting one, and since the star wrote Holidays in his home state Texas, we’re painted an even more intricate picture of the significance of Christmas in Gray’s life through his dependably outstanding lyrics. On one hand, the festive season consists of expectations, the cold, and the pain of bittersweet memory: ‘I’m too cold and I’m too tired to speak’. On the other, stronger, held hand, the friends Gray reunites with during the holidays are something of a lifeblood, reminding him that whatever else may change and be out of his control, his childhood friends are reliable sources of love, warmth and familiarity: ‘The years have passed but you laugh exactly the same’.

The theme of Christmas and the cold is immediately introduced in the first few bars of Holidays, with wintry found sounds of whistling wind, accompanied by the melancholic melody of the piano. This piano carries us into the first verse, harmoniously meeting Gray’s effortlessly atmospheric and emotive voice. The lyrics here evoke sensitivity and an overwhelming sense of being stuck, highlighted by the smooth and tentative nature of the vocals and the chorus is soon built up using a quiet acoustic guitar picking pattern and soft, choral harmonies. It’s these backing vocals that most encapsulate Gray’s unconventional take on the Christmas song, by imitating carolers but in a subdued, almost sombre fashion: a perfect first verse to set the song off on its bittersweet trajectory.

The nostalgic refrain of the chorus then hits the listener with another wave of emotion, with Gray fluidly and characteristically exploring the song’s themes of childhood, change, memory and home. This chorus is short and sweet – much like the singer’s holiday hometown visits – and we’re soon immersed in another verse and, more specifically, Gray’s youth. With the subtle addition of strings and a spectacular display of vocal range, he muses on the Christmas period in childhood and its beautifully human decorations, writing a Christmas story for his younger self with this second verse.

The journey of this single can be tracked not only through its lyrics, but its ever-building instrumentation too. As we move into the second chorus, more vocal layers are introduced, filling in the musical space and creating a heartwarming sense of togetherness; this contrasts the lonely feel of the first chorus, despite both being built on the same musical foundations, which allows the track to shift in mood, perspective and sound: a masterful design.

The instrumental section following this is a definite highlight of the track, with added bells truly encapsulating that hometown festive feel. But the real tearjerker here is the use of group whistling, interspersed through the section and deepening Gray’s sense of detached attachment to a former self and life. This element – or more specifically, the nostalgia it captures – is reminiscent of the train whistle heard at the end of Phoebe Bridgers’s Scott Street and the childhood phone call excerpt in Leith Ross’s Coming Back To Me: the climax of the song’s every theme, happy and sad, past and present. A harmonic handful of strings carries this height of feeling into the final, atmospheric, powerful chorus and at this point, it couldn’t be any clearer that Conan Gray is one of the modern music world’s truest songwriting experts. As Holidays comes to a close, he once again proves that he can capture an experience, whether collective or personal, in its rawest and most authentic form – and he sounds ethereal as he does it.

Found Heaven On Tour 2024 Dates (UK)

Thu Nov 7 – Manchester, UK – O2 Apollo SOLD OUT

Fri Nov 8 – Manchester, UK – O2 Apollo SOLD OUT

Sun Nov 10 – London, UK – OVO Arena Wembley SOLD OUT