Conan Gray brought his 2025 pop album Wishbone to AO Arena in Manchester last night, arriving on stage on a pedal bike before reaching into a mailbox to reveal his microphone. The crowd was covered in sailor hats as the singer-songwriter pushed his theatrical world tour another step toward the halfway point.
The Manchester stop showed why Gray has become one of pop’s more distinctive live acts. He built his career from the ground up, first posting covers on YouTube at 15, and by 2020 was already turning out indie-pop staples such as Maniac and Heather, both of which appeared on his debut album Kid Krow. A first big break came when he supported Panic! At The Disco on the Pray For The Wicked tour, and since then he has been linked with artists including Olivia Rodrigo and Laufey.
That rise matters now because Wishbone is not just another album cycle. It is the backbone of a world tour that is nearing its halfway point, with Gray carrying the show across Europe before closing with final dates in six Australian cities. The staging in Manchester fit that ambition: playful, surreal and built for a crowd that seemed to know every move.
Gray is not making the trek alone. Across the rest of the tour, he has been sharing the stage with support act Esha Tewari, an Australian artist who began her own musical journey on social media and is now performing songs from the four EPs she has released since 2024. Her presence gives the tour a sense of continuity, pairing two artists whose careers both moved from online discovery into larger rooms.
There is a clean line through Gray’s path, but the scale of the show also points to a harder truth about modern pop. The internet can start a career, but it does not guarantee the kind of live following that fills an arena in sailor hats or keeps a world tour moving from Manchester to Europe and on to Australia. Gray has already crossed that test. Manchester was proof that the audience has caught up with the act.
