The night is young: Conan Gray and girl in red

Conan Gray is a prime example of Generation Z’s obsession with normalcy and reality packaged in a faded VSCO filter with overlaid contour doodles. With vlogs and sit-down Q&As about his life in Texas suburbia, Conan Gray attracted 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube. His rising popularity sparked Republic Records’ interest and after the debut of his self-made single, “Idle Town,” they signed him.

Before entering the concert, I felt I had a personal stake to photograph Conan in a way that B-Side readers who didn’t know him would want to get to understand his music. Conan is able to capture the universal feeling of loneliness and confusion we feel in our adolescence, and our instincts to sweep it under the rug. However, by reveling in the broken-hearted and dejected moments, Conan uses his music to pull himself, and the rest of his fans, out of our depressive states and into hopeful mindsets. Deemed the next Troye Sivan, Conan Gray is a burgeoning force to be reckoned with.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the demographics of the audience at the March 13th show at August Hall, but I was. At every corner of the venue, pre-pubescent girls crowded to get the best view of the stage while their parents stood at the back holding their plastic cups filled with beer. I stood with them, as I waited until girl in red and Conan Gray took the stage.

girl in red, AKA 20 year old Marie Ulven, opened the show and conducted her all-male band in performing her angsty bedroom pop singles. She exuded confidence and complete control over the audience, as she had intimate conversations with them and later bodysurfed through the crowd.

She then passed on the spotlight to Conan Gray, whose stage presence was undeniably stellar for a 20-year-old UCLA college student on his first U.S. tour. It felt like his YouTube videos had sprung to life in front of my eyes, with prop clouds over his head as he sang his songs off his first EP Sunset Season (2018). He danced across the stage with fluidity and his effervescent personality captivated the audience. Although his songs were written during a turbulent time in his life, his carefree attitude on stage seemed to overwrite his past and create new and happier memories.