The Breakdown: Conan Gray on 'Alley Rose'

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.<br /><br />“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.”<br /><br />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.”