On March 27, American pop singer-songwriter Conan Gray released the single “The Best” — the first addition to Wishbone’s deluxe version scheduled for April 24.

“Wishbone,” Gray’s fourth studio album, debuted in August of last year, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200 — the highest placement of his career. In support of the album, the indie-pop artist has been on his “Wishbone World Tour” since Feb. 19. That opening night in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Gray premiered “The Best.”

In Gray’s own words, “The Best” should be viewed as the calm after the “middle of the storm that inspired [Wishbone].” In an Instagram post following the debut of the deluxe album, Gray explained that these new songs were inspired by “feelings [he] could only reach in the aftermath of the album’s release.”

Appropriately, “The Best” explores finding closure after heartbreak, drawing Gray’s most well-executed themes: nostalgia, memories, and missed chances to speak one’s mind to a former lover.

Opening with an expansive echo, Gray establishes the breakup theme immediately, with a resigned first line, “It was a bad time.” From there, the track crescendos quickly into a cinematic song centered around a play on the common throwaway breakup line “wish you the best.” Gray, heartbroken, paints images of “mint chocolate ice cream” and “hazel eyes” from a past relationship. In the first verse, the track settles into a triplet-driven waltz feel, stretching every third beat until the rhythm begins to feel like it’s set in a dream-like trance. Every other word — most longingly, the “miss” of “miss me” — is stretched out. While initially quite groovy, the waltz is a bit repetitive, so that when the pre-chorus arrives, it feels desperately anticipated.

From here, the song oscillates between the instrumental floods of sound and the more barren melodic line, through growing expansions of percussive backing that fade eventually into Gray’s thin voice. When the pre-chorus transitions to the chorus, the lyrics are accompanied by a surging overflow of instrumentals that seems to smother Gray’s voice; while it is common for Gray to use a cue-in of percussion and vocals to sign-post or lead into a chorus, he seems to overdo it here. Additionally, in “The Best,” Gray layers on thicker melodies than his prior tracks; the song is undoubtedly intended to be a tearjerker.

Yet, Gray’s voice seems to be more relaxed — more calm. He sings at a slower, controlled pace; his voice is restrained within a much lower register than the fuller range that he can usually handle. Even when Gray crows in his bridge, he is seemingly hiding behind a more polished voice, employing less of a wrenching, gritty voice. Coupled with whiplash from the emotional pieces of “Wishbone,” “The Best” presents Gray as someone urgently searching for closure — someone unaware that listeners can read through his feigned composure. For a song that advertises itself as a reconciliation and collection of oneself, the execution of a voice smothered by instrumental sound does no service to presenting a confident man who has moved on from a relationship. Fortunately, the emotional depth of the song saves it from the faults in production.

However, what the song has in emotional stakes it lacks in lyrical innovation. For a track that strives to innovate on the cliché “wish you the best,” the topics it explores are quite limited with respect to the specificity and memorability of the lyrics. Gray’s previous songs have often turned conventional breakup anthems into new ideas. For example, “Memories” challenges the idea that people want to remember a romance by singing about the longing to move on and erase the relationship from one’s memory. However, “The Best” interprets the term “wish you the best” by presenting the idea straight on; the chorus crescendos with the trite, uninspiring lines “I could make peace with it, finally sleep with it / Finally wish you the best.”

As the song concludes, Gray’s voice seems to wander off. The final bar “wish you the” – cutting off before “best” can be sung — seems to place Gray’s whole promise of finding closure in question. As the closing sound opens up into an expansive fade — mirroring the beginning — the song seems almost engineered to be played indistinguishably on loop.

As such, “The Best” can best be described as a cathartic exhale that never quite finishes the breath. It is Gray at his most calm and composed and, perhaps for that very reason, his most revealing. It’s a song that embodies what it means to wish someone well though you can’t quite bring yourself to say the word — and mean it.

—Staff writer Cloris F. Shi can be reached at [email protected].