Kid Krow in Quarantine

Conan Gray’s Debut Soars In Right On Time

The release of Conan Gray’s debut album Kid Krow wasn’t planned to coincide with a global pandemic. The week leading up to Friday’s release was supposed to be chock-full of promo, including a performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Instead, with L.A. and seemingly everywhere else on virtual lockdown, Conan promoted his album via the same digital channels upon which he originally built his fan-base.

Honestly, it was kind of perfect for a singer-songwriter who got his start on YouTube.

On Thursday night, as the minutes ticked down to midnight, Conan Gray was on his bed with his guitar, having a very public freak-out on Instagram Live. With some 17,000 fans cheering him on, he sang a few songs, chatted about the album, and reminisced about the road that had gotten him to this moment.

As it turned out, Thursday was the three-year anniversary of the release of the YouTube video that would change his life: the self-made music video for his song “Idle Town” that would go viral and ultimately lead to a record deal. He pulled up the video and provided commentary (“you guys, that was our high…