Conan Gray’s Wishbone: The Album He Never Meant To Share

Conan Gray’s new and unexpected album, Wishbone, was released on 15 Aug 2025. 

Credit: Conan Gray

BY
Chloe Loh

Deputy Editor (Production)

Hype Issue #74

Published on

Aug 23, 2025

Join Chloe Loh as she dives into the emotional chaos and unfiltered truth of Conan Gray’s boldest work yet.

It’s long been a standing tradition to break a wishbone between two people. The one with the longer end is said to have good fortune or a wish granted. However, Conan Gray’s album Wishbone was written from the point of view of somehow always getting the short end. 

The album is raw and heartfelt, delving into Gray’s feelings of resentment, frustration, powerlessness, and disappointment from life’s unfairness. It isn’t just another pop album, it’s a diary cracked open.

In The Quiet Corners

A sketch Gray did in the middle of making Wishbone that he felt represented him. 

Credit: Conan Gray

Wishbone, Gray’s most intimate album yet, was born from heartbreak and moments that were never meant for public ears. For two years, he secretly wrote songs after shows in the basement of venues, under the sheets of his hotel beds, and in the narrow gaps between tours. He wrote about all the things he felt nobody wanted to hear and things he didn’t want people to find out. Gray never told his friends or his label about these songs and had no plans to release any of them. 

According to an interview with Genius, Gray started recording these songs after he played them to the first person he ever made music with, fellow songwriter and record producer, Dan Nigro. “I didn’t know why I was recording, I just was. I didn’t know what story I was telling; I was just living in it. Slowly, I started to see myself in full picture. The slivers of myself I’d always been, but never faced. the songs I’d always been writing, but never singing. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by an album.” Nigro would later go on to help produce this album as the executive producer.

Wishbone is about Gray’s first real heartbreak, and this threads through every lyric, swell, and emotion. Written in fleeting moments of emotional overflow and vulnerability, these songs were clearly meant for himself. However, after playing them for friends and seeing how deeply they resonated with the songs, he ultimately decided to release this accidental masterpiece.

Stripped To The Bone

While Kid Krow leaned into indie-pop grit, Superache swelled with cinematic balladry, and Found Heaven shimmered with retro 80s synth-pop, Wishbone has pared everything back to a much more stripped, intimate, and deeply confessional sonic palette. A completely different take from his usual style of polished instrumentals, Wishbone highlights Gray’s voice and lyrics, leaving sparse, subtle, and acoustic instrumentation. This stripped-back music further enhances the feeling of intimacy and vulnerability, almost as if we’re overhearing Gray singing to himself in the bedroom. 

Nigro was the one who encouraged Gray to fully embrace this intimate style and encouraged him to write the songs himself, without a lyricist’s help.  As a result, Wishbone has five tracks where Gray is the sole writer, the most solo-written tracks since Kid Krow.

Wishbone is an album of everything Gray has always wanted to say but couldn’t quite find the words for until now. Credit: Conan Gray

If you were to listen to Found Heaven and Wishbone back to back, you’d get sonic whiplash from the huge style difference. However, Kid Krow does have some similarities to Wishbone. Kid Krow’s stripped indie production, lo-fi beats, muted guitars, and overall coming-of-age angst give similar raw and confessional vibes to Wishbone. Wishbone could pretty much be seen as an ‘older brother’ to Kid Krow; while raw and confessional, this new album takes on a more reflective vibe that is shaped by melancholy adulthood rather than teenage angst.

Between Love And Loss

The first heartbreak: messy, all-consuming, intense, and transformative. Gray fully encompasses the theme of his first real heartbreak in this album. His previous albums leaned heavily on storytelling and exaggerated drama, where the heartbreak was from observations and imagined scenarios. In contrast, Wishbone is more like reflecting on a lived experience and the emotional rollercoaster of it, messy, imperfect, and candid.

The songs in Wishbone reflect both the sweetness of and the longing for intimacy, as well as the ache of its loss. Gray’s lyrics and emotions are a lot more direct and tangible, displaying the nitty-gritty details for the world to hear. He allows silence and fragility to carry the emotional weight, making the listeners feel his emotions vicariously. 

Wishbone quietly traces the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, sorrow, and acceptance. This Song and Eleven Eleven reflect on the initial disbelief that the relationship is over and cling to the hope that the love could still be salvaged. The frustration surfaces in Class Clown and Nauseous, where unrequited love curdles into bitterness. Romeo and My World slips into bargaining, imagining a different, fairytale-like reality where things ended differently. Heartbreak deepens in Vodka Cranberry, Caramel, and Sunset Tower, where the sweetness of a past love, now tinged with sorrow and loneliness. Finally, Connell and Care mark a tentative acceptance, not without scars, but with the quiet resolve to let go and move on.

Gray hopes that this album can be a home to his fans as much as it has been a home for him. Credits: Conan Gray

Even though these songs were written initially as an emotional outlet and private therapy for Gray, their articulation of unnamed feelings makes them universally understood and relatable. This could be why Gray’s friends encouraged him to release these songs, as he wasn’t the only one who needed them, because pain this honest doesn’t belong to only one person. 

The Tracks That Cut Deep

Eleven Eleven – Denial

The album’s quiet, gut-wrenching track, the lyrics take the spotlight. Gray truly captured the essence of disbelief, clinging to hope that isn’t there anymore, searching for any of the tiniest signs that it’s possible to save the relationship. The instrumentation and drums are minimal, allowing the song to feel like a dreamy, lonely, and sad night of reflection and longing.

Nauseous – Anger

Driven by tense and jittery production, the paranoia, anger, and self-blame of heartbreak are bottled up in this one song. Gray’s vocals oscillate between vulnerability and venom, blaming himself for being too trusting and open one moment, and anger at his past love the next for breaking that trust. One of the most confrontational tracks in this album, Gray directly addresses his fears and anger at those around him. 

Vodka Cranberry – Sorrow

A deceptively casual title for one of the album’s most devastating, scream-in-the-car songs, Vodka Cranberry is one of the emotional keystone songs of Wishbone. The slow build-up hits you with a torrent of loneliness, regret, and longing for once sweet nights, but now has a lingering sting at the back of your throat. Equal parts cathartic and quiet devastation, Vodka Cranberry is the kind of track that lingers long after it’s over, just like the emotions expressed in it.

The Wishbone Remains

Wishbone is a heartbreak diary set to music, never meant to be revealed and exposed to the world, which only hits us with its powerful emotions harder. Gray’s most personal and emotionally raw album yet, it also reflects on his journey through his teenage angst in Kid Krow, melodramatic heartbreak in Superache, and euphoric escapism in Found Heaven. Though deeply specific, the emotions felt and conveyed are universal, allowing listeners like you and me to feel seen and heard in our own heartbreak. 

Gray broke his wishbone, and in the uneven split, gave us more than he kept for himself. I’m glad that he chose to release this raw and heartfelt album. Eleven Eleven’s soft vocals and devastatingly hopeful lyrics definitely have a special place in my heart. I think all of us feel a little less alone with Wishbone to keep us company as we face our own challenges in life.