Found Heaven by Conan Gray was released on April 5th, 2024 . Gray’s past albums have stayed in the genre of pop and indie music along with similar artists such as; Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Ellish, Olivia Rodrigo, and more. In his latest album, he strayed away from what he knew and decided to take a spin on 80’s pop.

Before listening to the 13 songs on the album, I expected "Found Heaven”, “Lonely Dancers”, “The Final Fight", and "Miss you” to all be slower, sadder songs. I also expected Fainted Love, and Winner to be love songs. However “Final Fight” started slow, then got faster. And most of these other songs were different from how I perceived them.

For Gray’s first song, Found heaven, I was expecting it to be slower and potentially be a sad song. The song starts off very soulfully, reminding me of a gospel choir. Gray uses his poetic abilities to compare his lover to heaven and tells the listener to not be afraid of love. Throughout the song he tells us that he had a “war” with his lover which ended up with them leaving. He had a strong start to his album with making this the first song. 

Moving on to the second song of the album, Never Ending Song. Before listening to this song, I had heard that many people weren’t too fond of it. I wasn’t too sure what to think going into it as I heard that it was vastly different from his past albums. When I first played the song I immediately noticed the retro vibe it had. He continuously describes their story as a “Never Ending Song”. Despite being only 2:34 minutes it really does feel like a never ending song with its repetition.

Fainted Love is the next song on the list. It has more of the retro vibe to it, making it feel like you are listening to something in the background of an old video game. I really enjoyed the beat drop and thought it was a nice element to incorporate into the song. The ending was also a really cool way to wrap up the song.

I thought Gray took a risky move by doing a genre switch because there is no way to tell if people will like it. I personally think he did a very nice job by straying away from his comfort zone but still making his songs sound like him. He continues his meaningful lyrics and retro background music throughout all of his songs. All in all, I really enjoyed this album and would recommend it to others.