loren gray

Loren Gray unveiled her debut studio album Guilty on Friday (April 21) and to celebrate, the 21-year-old sat down with Billboard‘s Rania Aniftos to open up about her journey from social media star to pop star.

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Gray released her album as an independent artist after leaving her deal with Virgin Records and Capitol Records. “Everything, for me, is backwards,” she explains. “Usually, you make the music, you grow the audience and it grows from there. For me, it’s like, ‘You have this audience. Now what do we do?’”

She continued, “I almost feel like everyone was afraid to touch my project. No one really wanted to develop an artist. The way I always looked at it was that my social media presence and everything I built there means nothing when it comes to my music, because music is a completely different audience and it should be treated that way.”

While she’s still so young, Gray often expresses her maturity online to her 54 million TikTok followers when discussing heavier topics like mental health and developing genuine friendships. “Through the years, because I grew up online, I got more and more comfortable sharing things that I was going through,” she reveals of her growth. “I started looking for that connection and that’s sort of what kept me passionate and interested. […] I keep a very small circle now, and everyone that’s in my life is like family and I trust them.”

Watch Billboard‘s full interview with Loren Gray above.