“Disaster” by Conan Gray

“Disaster” is premised on Conan Gray mustering up the courage to make a pass at the addressee, the apple of his eye. Said addressee is someone whom he already has a strong “platonic” relationship with. But to note, as relayed in the first verse, when Conan does shoot his shot, he doesn’t do so directly. Instead he sends the addressee a text and basically goes into temporary hiding, hoping that they will respond favorably.

According to Gray in his own words, it is that anxiety which the lyrics of “Disaster” are supposed to represent. The reason making such a move is so fear-inducing is because many, if not most people are afraid of romantic rejection. And when the person you’re smitten by is an established or potential platonic friend, trying to move the relationship outside of that zone may make things awkward.

So as Conan explained, the prospect of expressing your love to someone can result in overthinking of what their reaction may be.

And that is exactly what the vocalist is going through. If the addressee reacts unfavorably to his solicitation, the chorus implies that Conan has already concocted a story to make the text look like a mistake of drunkenness. He understands that expressing his love to this friend “could be a disaster”. And obviously, the prospect of his friend saying no has dominated his thinking more so than the possibility that they may say yes.

Writing Credits for “Disaster”

This was co-written by Julia Michaels, a singer in her own right who’s even more renowned as a songwriter. The track’s producer is Cirkut, a Canadian musician, who’s also credited as a co-writer. And of course so is Conan Gray.

Release

“Disaster” is from Gray’s second full-length outing “Superache”. This is a project Republic Records released on 22 June 2022. To note, “superache” is not a canonical word. Conan has inferred that album’s title stands for is it “being a super-accurate depiction” of the pain he has experienced in life.

It does not appear at the writing of this post that “Disaster” has been officially released as a single. But the song has been afforded its own music video, as directed by Taylor Cohen. The video was made public a couple of days after the album itself.

Before being released, a total of five official singles were launched to support “Superache”. These songs are:

• “Astronomy”
• “People Watching”
• “Jigsaw”
• “Memories”
• “Yours”