By: Staff Writer Bee Wilson 

Conan Gray released his fourth studio album, Wishbone, on Aug. 15. The album features dreamy sounds, powerful vocals, and crushing feelings of heartbreak and yearning.  

The aesthetic of the album surrounds imagery of things that people make wishes on such as wishbones, the time 11:11, and four-leaf clovers. This is all neatly wrapped in the sailor costumes and “stormy seas” vision that Gray gives himself on the album cover and concert outfits.  

One can hear that the songs are from Gray’s point of view based on past romantic and familial relationships. Between a man that pretended to love him for a summer just to replace him with a different girl, a rocky life growing up, and being the subject of experimentation in love by past relationships, Wishbone is a heart-wrenching exploration of being in love with bad people and learning to overcome that.  

The album has several standout songs, between the most popular songs and the most striking to listen to. My top three from the album includes Actor, Vodka Cranberry, and Nauseous. 

Actor is a song about the end of a summer fling and the heartbreak of Gray’s partner not wanting anyone to know about him. He describes in his chorus the idea of “an undead wedding day”, and what the relationship physically looked like. He explains that the partner was more confident than him, but the way the two of them coped was similarly self-destructive.  

Vodka Cranberry was the heartbreak ballad of the summer, describing the feeling of not wanting to let go of a lover, even though love is no longer fully present in his partner. He describes specific dates that he remembers, and the feeling of being secretly hated. This song, with its dreamy instrumental sound and dramatic ending high note, is both the most popular of the album and Gray’s third-most streamed song in his entire career. This song is the one that Gray has been taking to award shows and viral performances to showcase and advertise his album.  

Nauseous can be described as the most heartbreaking song of 2025. The most striking line is the beginning of the chorus, where Gray tells his partner that “your love is a threat and I’m nauseous”. He describes the relationships he used to be in, and that he doesn’t mind dating bad people because of the expectation that everyone will be bad to him in love. He describes to his lover that he’s scared of falling for them, but he didn’t ever learn how to properly fall in love. This song has made it onto so many of my playlists, truthfully.