“The internet was the first place where people told me it was okay for me to be strange,” Conan Gray tells Apple Music. “It was my diary.” The bedroom pop artist relied on platforms like YouTube as a lifeline at a young age, finding refuge from the childhood hardships he endured. “I had been realizing that people were actually watching,” he says. “I just think anyone can relate to feeling like you live in your own little world.” In his Up Next film, Gray talks about conveying truth through his art, feeling like an outsider growing up in suburban Texas, and how his debut single “Idle Town” launched his music career. And in an interview with Apple Music’s Travis Mills, he discusses banging out multiple songs a day, being inspired by artists like Taylor Swift and Lorde, and the message he’d tell his younger self. Watch the film and interview and listen to Gray’s new album, Kid Krow, along with selections from the rest of the artists in the Up Next series.