THREE ALBUMS INTO his career, Conan Gray wrote what he calls his “first ever love song,” a lovelorn ballad titled “Alley Rose” from Found Heaven. The 25-year-old musician had written about love before, but not from the perspective of having truly been put through the emotional wringer by way of a real, reciprocated relationship. On the latest episode of Rolling Stone‘s The Breakdown, Gray delves into how “Alley Rose” — written on his own and produced by Greg Kurstin — emerged as the one song on the album that details the aftermath of the crush he spent most of the record singing about.
“I don’t really write about things immediately after they happen,” Gray explains. “After I have enough perspective, then I start to write about situations in a way that’s more accurate to how I felt rather than just like, ‘Fuck you!’ It’s a lot more nuanced when I give myself time to write about something.”
Gray had written entire albums about crushes, unrequited feelings, and internal reflections before — his 2020 debut Kid Krow and 2022’s Superache — but he wasn’t prepared for the way heartbreak could bulldoze his process. “[“Alley Rose”] made it on the album very much at the very, very end, because I hadn’t really been planning on writing about a breakup until I got broken up with,” he says. “And then I was depressed for seven months and didn’t write and couldn’t work because I was severely ill.”
“I don’t really write about things immediately after they happen,” Gray explains. “After I have enough perspective, then I start to write about situations in a way that’s more accurate to how I felt rather than just like, ‘Fuck you!’ It’s a lot more nuanced when I give myself time to write about something.”
Gray had written entire albums about crushes, unrequited feelings, and internal reflections before — his 2020 debut Kid Krow and 2022’s Superache — but he wasn’t prepared for the way heartbreak could bulldoze his process. “[“Alley Rose”] made it on the album very much at the very, very end, because I hadn’t really been planning on writing about a breakup until I got broken up with,” he says. “And then I was depressed for seven months and didn’t write and couldn’t work because I was severely ill.”
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MusicTranscript
00:00I think it sounds very like alien kind of vibes like if an alien was speaking
00:09to you and you didn't understand what they're saying but they were like why
00:11the fuck don't you understand. Hey y'all it's Conan Gray and this is The Breakdown.
00:23So I don't really write about things immediately after they happen. After I
00:29have enough perspective then I start to write about situations in a way that's
00:34more accurate to how I felt rather than just like fuck you I hate you you know
00:37it's like a lot more nuanced when I give myself time to write about something but
00:41I think with this album most of the album is about kind of my like crush and
00:45being really excited when when I realized that this person was in love
00:50with me. This one song in particular Alley Rose is the only one that's really
00:54about the aftermath. It made it on the album very much at the very very end
00:59because I hadn't really been planning on writing about a breakup until I got
01:03broken up with and then was depressed for seven months and didn't write and
01:06couldn't work because I was severely ill. This album is distinctly different than
01:10everything else I've made. It's my third album I never thought I would even make
01:14one album so I just wanted to try something that was different just for
01:18the sake of being different. I was falling in love for the first time ever
01:22which created feelings in me that I'd never felt before. Basically I felt like
01:27a completely different person and I just needed to represent it in the music.
01:32Now that that's over I'm like whoa what did I make? I like look at this I'm like
01:38damn like was it that serious but I guess it was and in the time it really
01:43was and I love this album because it's a little capsule of this time in my life
01:48that I don't think I'll ever feel like ever again and I don't think we're ever
01:52gonna get like an upbeat crazy album out of me ever again so I hope people can
01:57appreciate it for what it is. So Greg Christen is I can safely say the most
02:02talented musician I know. I've never met anybody on earth who's better than him.
02:07I've met a lot of producers like it's genuinely unbelievable. I could literally
02:12record a fart into my phone and he could make it sound beautiful in some like
02:17arrangement of piano. It's unbelievable and he's the sweetest, kindest, quietest
02:23soul ever and so unsuspecting and it was perfect for us because I'm incredibly
02:29shy naturally. This is all an act. I'm a liar. And so I just go in there and be like hey Greg and he'd be like hey Conan and I'd whisper the whole session and put
02:41together this song and there were a few things that I distinctly wanted. I
02:46knew I wanted live strings and I knew I wanted weird sounds and he has a really
02:51fun collection of random synths and toys that like make weird sounds and stuff so
02:56I mean my favorite sound in the whole song is this. So this is a little drum machine.
03:03It's a pad. It's like an electronic pad and then you hit it with a whatever I don't know your finger
03:09or something and then it just like makes these weird little drum sounds. It's awesome and it's
03:15unpredictable too so you don't know what it's going to do so we just like kept on having to do
03:18it until we found something that made sense but this is what it sounds like.
03:28So that's layered with the other percussion in there.
03:32I knew I wanted a sound that you remembered. That's really the reason why this is in here but together
03:37Yeah so they kind of come together and you you weirdly aren't really thinking about the weird
03:49sound that much because we'd made the whole song then I was like Greg like it sounds too normal
03:53like we need to add some strange things. I wrote the song completely on my own and I brought it
03:58into Greg. I think the song itself just you know when I wrote it on keys it's just a very like
04:04loud song. It spans like two octaves just the way it's written. I mean the highest notes are so high
04:12and the lowest notes are just so low.
04:27And then the highest note is
04:34If you exclude the ridiculous ad-lib.
04:53Yeah so I guess the highest note is
04:56and then this is
04:57It's so so ridiculous. It's just so hard to sing but it's mostly the belts that are hard
05:08just because like I never claimed to be a good singer and I can claim that I know how to write
05:14a good song but oh singing. I love to do it but it's just it's it's a challenge and I really put
05:20myself to the test with this one. I don't know if people really notice this but the song is the same
05:27melody the whole entire song. If we look at the vocals.
05:43So it's the same exact melody throughout the whole entire song. It's just an octave difference. I knew
05:51kind of just to keep you interested it had to have pretty like expansive production. I do this
05:58quite often where I take a verse and then I just do the octave above for the chorus. I'm so lyric
06:06driven that I really don't want to bug people too much with the melody. There are some people who
06:14can write melodies that are so gorgeous that I couldn't care less what the person is saying
06:18but I don't think I'm one of those people. A melody isn't necessarily like my skill set. I just
06:24love words. I love to just tell a story. I wrote the song in London. I'd essentially just been
06:31dumped like the day before and it was the first time that I'd really loved someone and had them
06:37love me back and it was mortifying and interesting and formative and amazing and terrifying and I was
06:45devastated. I was coming to London to spend time with them and then I was dumped so I didn't have
06:51anyone to see. Thankfully I had another friend that was in London at the time so I went and
06:55stayed with her and I just sat in her apartment eating pizza so sad and I wrote this song but
07:05the song was originally called Abbey Road because I was in London so in my mind I was like what the
07:12f**k like I'm literally on f**king Abbey Road right now and you're not here and you were supposed to
07:17be here. It's like where the f**k did you go? It's really what the song really is.
07:22It was originally just like oh where'd you go go Abbey Road oh where'd you go go go. I knew in the
07:28moment that I can't name the song Abbey Road. That's just shooting myself in the f**king foot. I was
07:34like I have to change this to something else and so I changed it to Ally Rose because it rhymed with
07:39Abbey Road but also it's a name and there's a significance to the reason why I named it Ally
07:45specifically. I wanted it to be a name that sounded a little kind of like in between a lot of names
07:52because I wanted it to be the kind of name that when you hear it you hear the name and you don't
07:56really think who is Ally Rose? Who is this person? I want you to think oh I have an Ally Rose like I
08:02know exactly who I'm thinking of right now when this song plays and so yeah I wanted to kind of
08:07sound like a general name but also you know it's it's Ally as in like Alleyway. It's not actually
08:13spelled like most Alley's. Alley also felt like a good representation of the time that I'd spent
08:19with this person because it was just super closed. It was like this very very closed little like line
08:24of my life where nobody knew and it was just like little private spot in between the seams of the
08:31rest of the world and Rose just made sense because Rose is a symbol of love but I think a very stupid
08:38symbol of love like who the fuck buys people roses? I don't know. To me Ally Rose is my very first love
08:44song because there's no point in the song where I'm like accusing anyone of mistreating me or
08:49anything like that. It's it's not me pointing fingers and like fuck you I hate you like never
08:54come back. The whole song is me begging this person to return. It's me saying hey I loved you
09:01so much you taught me so much about life so much about love please just come back. There's a ton
09:07of time changes in the song and the bridge just completely speeds up which was so tricky to do.
09:25If it makes me sound sane, I'd have my fingers through your hair
09:30and I'd thank God to touch the flame because I swore necks would make for prison
09:35I swore lips would make for lies and I thought if you ever leave me that I'd be you
09:42Do I? Don't even care if it's just a summer fling if it's all experimental and you go back to
09:52sacred things but I swore hands were made for fighting I swore eyes were made to cry
09:58but you're the first person that I've seen who's proven that I might be loved
10:07So it's uh this like huge stack of of vocals and I told Greg I was like I want it to be like
10:14Beethoven-esque like I want the the harmonies to feel very like classical music and
10:19thankfully Greg is so good at classical so I really put him to work there really got my
10:26money's worth and we made this beautiful stack of vocals and I say at the very beginning of the
10:32bridge you know I don't even care if it makes me sound insane I ran my fingers through your hair
10:37and I thanked God to touch the flame you know I just love that the idea of like running your
10:41hands through someone's hair and knowing that you that like that it's gonna fucking ruin your life
10:47but also being like this is so worth it like this is exactly what it should be and then I say
10:53you know at the whole throughout the whole bridge I'm talking about being um shattered
10:59that this person left me but then it all twists around I had this very kind of um distorted view
11:07of love as a kid I very much didn't believe that it really existed and all the loving relationships
11:15that I'd witnessed in my own life had fallen apart and everything kind of ended in doom to me
11:19so I didn't really think that it was worthwhile to love I didn't think that it was worthwhile to
11:23get married I didn't think it was worthwhile to ever give your heart away to anyone so I am
11:28explaining throughout the bridge like you know like I thought hands were made for fighting I
11:32thought eyes were made to cry I thought all love ever is is just this big lie I thought that all
11:38love ever leads to is pain but then I say at the very end but you're the first person in my life
11:43who's ever shown me that maybe that's not true maybe that's all a lie and maybe love actually
11:48does exist and maybe things can actually be good which is wonderful because uh they're not in my
11:53life anymore so it's great um but it's a confession of love and that's why I think it's a love song
11:59whereas my other breakup breakup songs in my life have always just been like
12:04you suck you know get out of my life this is like
12:08damn like you really meant a lot to me I wish you'd just return
12:33oh
12:42there's like a really hilarious ad live in there it's like so ridiculous it's just sometimes you
12:49just need things to be like dumbly ridiculous and when you are in love you don't feel embarrassed
12:57to be that ridiculous when you're out of love that's a whole other story you look back and
13:03you're like okay okay that was interesting but I love it I love that this this song is like that's
13:10how I felt I let I let myself feel like that I think for every album that I've made I just write
13:16and write and write and write and write until I feel like I wrote enough and the last song on the
13:21album is always my favorite because I think it encapsulates the whole you know two-year process
13:26in one little song rather than like the little bits and pieces of it and so for my very first
13:31album the last song on my debut was Heather and it was I think the song that just encapsulated the
13:37whole era and then for Super 8 the last song that I wrote for that was Memories and it just was like
13:43yep that's that was that time and then for this one it's Ally Rose it's always that last song
13:47that I think has the most perspective and has the most kind of just like genuine human emotion
13:52because there's a little bit less noise it's so worth it to put yourself out there and be open
13:59to the possibilities of life and of love I'm someone who spent my whole life hiding in my
14:04fucking bedroom scared to do anything and this album was huge just exercise to me it was just
14:11this big experiment of like who could I be if I just took away all the things I think defined me
14:16and just like let myself exist for a year and just like see what I do what will I learn and
14:22where will I land and I landed in high places and low places and it was a huge learning
14:27experience and I'm really grateful for the love that I had and for the love that I lost.