From the outside, it seemed like Gabriel Conte had it all. Already a breakout star at 23, he was living in LA, married to the love of his life, and making his living as an actor and vlogger with a devoted fanbase roughly ten million strong across platforms. Behind the scenes, though, Conte was struggling just to get through the day, wrestling with a deep depression in what he describes as the darkest season of his life.

“I’d essentially worked myself into a rut,” he explains. “I lost my sense of purpose, my motivation, my creativity. I needed a hard reset, and I found it in music.”

Recounting the tumultuous last five years of his life, Conte’s utterly absorbing solo debut, ‘Belong,’ is a chronicle of hope and despair, commitment and resilience, family and devotion. Conte recorded the collection with songwriter/producer Denny White, and the pair’s chemistry proves intoxicating here, blurring the lines between pop, indie, and electronic music with slick beats, moody atmospherics, and mesmerizing soundscapes. While the production is polished and dreamy, the writing is thoroughly raw, and the performances are intimate and vulnerable to match, hinting at everything from Lauv to Shawn Mendes as Conte charts his journey from lost to found with deep introspection and unflinching honesty. The end result is a moving, revelatory collection fueled by unwavering faith, a spellbinding debut built on the belief that a greater plan exists for each and every one of us willing to embrace the love that surrounds us and work towards the better selves we carry within.

“My faith is at the root of who I am,” say Conte, “but regardless of what you believe, everyone experiences love and depression and ups and downs in their lives. These are songs about the fundamental experience of being human, and I wanted to write them in a way that everyone could relate to.”

Born and raised in south Florida, Conte discovered a passion for performing at an early age. While he played drums and guitar for fun and often performed music at the church where his father served as worship leader, it was acting that truly enthralled him. He took the stage regularly in plays and musicals throughout his childhood, and as a teenager, he began shooting and editing short videos, which quickly amassed a large following online. By the time Conte headed off to study acting in college, he was making major waves on social media, and it was then that he realized his love for digital creation could become more than just a hobby.

“I knew I always wanted to get to LA and see what all the hype was about,” says Conte, “so I decided to give it a shot one summer. I figured out pretty quickly that I could make a living doing what I loved there, so I just decided to stay.”

As his audience continued to grow, Conte landed himself a variety of film, television, and web roles, including a regular spot on the award-winning series Mr. Student Body President. It was around this same time that he fell in love with another digital star, Australian content creator Jess Bauer, and the pair were married in 2016. Yet despite his blossoming career, or perhaps because of it, Conte found himself unable to fully enjoy the life he’d carved for himself in Los Angeles. A natural born hustler, he was taking every opportunity that came his way and churning out a staggering amount of original video content without taking time for space for himself. Eventually, he reached his breaking point.

“I had to walk away from it all,” says Conte. “I had to put everything on pause and reconnect with what really mattered to me.”

Stepping back from his life as an actor and digital star, Conte let his accounts go temporarily dormant, using that time to instead focus on himself and his family. He began attending therapy to get a handle on his mental health, and he started writing poetry as a means of working through the often-overwhelming emotions he found himself grappling with in the process. The more he wrote, the more he recognized a lyrical quality to his words, and soon he was adding chords and melodies and fleshing his poems out into full blown songs.

“As much as I loved singing and performing over the years, I’d never thought of myself as a songwriter,” confesses Conte, who released a series of cover EPs with his wife that have racked up more than 60 million streams on Spotify alone. “Something about these poems just felt like they needed to be songs, though, and the transition happened very naturally for me.”

Collaborating closely with White on both the writing and recording, Conte headed into the studio in the winter of 2019 and worked on and off for the better part of a year. While he was used to regularly sharing his life with his fans as a vlogger, there was something different about creating music, something that cut far deeper and showcased parts of his personality few had ever seen.

“It was freeing to be that honest with the songs,” says Conte. “There are things you can express with music, ways you can be open and vulnerable that just don’t really translate to the video format, so this felt like a whole new way of sharing myself.”

Indeed, Conte holds little back on ‘Belong,’ which opens with the hypnotic title track. Like much of the album, the song reckons with loneliness and purpose, picking up the pieces in a search for redemption. The bittersweet “Be Somebody,” for instance, wrestles with our dueling desires for connection and independence, while the breathy “Rollercoaster” struggles to balance the personal and the professional, and the revealing “What’s Wrong With Me” tackles the depths of depression. Even at his lowest, though, Conte remains anchored by bonds both spiritual and personal. The tender “Boca to Brisbane” celebrates the triumph of love over despair, while the effervescent “Proud” draws on family ties for support and motivation, and the slow-burning lead single “I’m Not Sorry” comes to recognize that the most challenging moments in life often lead to the most beautiful rewards.

“I wrote that song about the journey Jess and I have been on in faith and in love,” says Conte. “It was my way of saying that I don’t regret a single thing that’s happened, because it’s all made us stronger and brought us closer together.”

It’s on that sentiment that Conte closes the album, bidding farewell to the west coast and returning to Florida with his wife on the effervescent “Los Angeles.” “Climbing out of this LA deep end,” Conte sings confidently, “I know now all I need is you.”

“I wanted to end on an upbeat note, to let the world know how much better I’m doing,” says Conte. “I went through the valley, journeyed up the mountain, and ultimately found myself again.”

Gabriel Conte may not have it all—none of us do. But these days, he’s got something even better: enough.

GABRIEL CONTE SHORT BIO

Recounting the tumultuous last five years of his life, Gabriel Conte’s utterly absorbing solo debut, ‘Belong,’ is a chronicle of hope and despair, commitment and resilience, faith and family. Conte recorded the collection with songwriter/producer Denny White, and the pair’s chemistry proves intoxicating here, blurring the lines between pop, indie, and electronic music with slick beats, moody atmospherics, and mesmerizing soundscapes. While the production may be polished and dreamy, the writing is thoroughly raw, and the performances are intimate and vulnerable to match, hinting at everything from Shawn Mendes to Lauv as Conte charts his journey from lost to found with deep introspection and unflinching honesty.

Born and raised in Florida, Conte first came to fame as a teenager, when his homemade videos began amassing an enormous following online. By the age of 23, he was living in LA, married to the love of his life, and making his living as film and television actor and vlogger with a devoted fanbase roughly ten million strong. Behind the scenes, though, Conte was struggling just to get through the day, wrestling with a deep depression in what he describes as the darkest season of his life. “I needed a hard reset,” he says, “and I found it in music.” The result is ‘Belong,’ a moving, revelatory debut built on the belief that a greater plan exists for each and every one of us willing to embrace the love that surrounds us and work towards the better selves we carry within.