Music
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Why are we so obsessed with Chappell Roan?
With the singer-songwriter headlining Reading & Leeds this summer, we take a look at the overnight success that was 10 years in the making
In a McDonald’s in Cheltenham Spa, my boyfriend looks up from his mozzarella sticks and says, “This is Chappell Roan, isn’t it?”.
Under the general chatter and the calling out of orders, the fast food restaurant is playing ‘Pink Pony Club’, an early single of Roan’s that later found a home on her debut album, The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess. It’s a song about breaking away from a conservative Christian upbringing and taking a job at a gay strip club, celebrating self-discovery, queer identity and sexual liberation. For a second, I’m pleasantly surprised – when I was growing up in this town, the local MacDonald’s was always just playing whatever was top of the charts. But of course, that’s still the case. Chappell Roan is as mainstream as it gets.
As of the last twelve months, Roan is astronomically famous, famous enough to be making heartfelt pleas for privacy on social media, famous enough to headline one of the UK’s biggest festivals. As of this time last year, that choice might have been surprising. Roan’s star has risen about as fast as its possible for a star to rise, taking her from a queer pop princess with a cult following to one of the biggest artists on the planet in under a year. But as in every case of overnight success, this has all been years in the making.
Roan’s most dedicated day-one fans knew her first as Kayleigh Rose, a teenager uploading covers to YouTube. Her first original song, ‘Die Young’, was posted in 2014. In chevron print and statement jewelry, a young Roan adopts the popular vocal style of the era that came to be known as ‘singing in cursive’. She doesn’t look or sound much like herself as the world would eventually know her, but her star power is still undeniable. Roan signed to Atlantic Records in 2015, adopting her stage name the following year. Her first single, ‘Good Hurt’, would be released in 2017 – a good six years before her career-making debut album. Three years later, after a run of singles that failed to make an impact, she would be dropped by her label.
After parting ways with Atlantic, whilst working as a barista and nanny to support herself, Roan watched as ‘Pink Pony Club’ – one of the singles Atlantic deemed not high-performing enough – gained traction. The song made best-of lists for 2020, and then again for 2021, as it began to spread via word of mouth. Over the next two years, Roan worked on her music independently, eventually signing a publishing deal with Sony that put her back in a room with collaborator Dan Nigro and led to the release of ‘Naked In Manhattan’ – another song that would find a home on her 2023 debut album. Whilst working with Roan, Nigro was also helping to launch another huge name in 2020s pop: in adjacent studio, Olivia Rodrigo was writing and recording her debut album, Sour. Roan provided backing vocals on a few of Rodrigo’s songs, ultimately winding up as Rodrigo’s opening act on the Sour tour. It would be one of her first steps into the mainstream.
With singles ‘Femininomenon’ and ‘Casual’ out and garnering praise, and Roan about to embark on her first headline tour, she was undeniably heading towards chart success. Roan seemed determined to curve the mainstream wherever she could, however, booking drag queens as opening acts across the tour and designing the shows – down to their individual fancy-dress themes – around her queer fanbase, all of which served to make the tour feel like more of an intimate club than an invitation to the masses. After a few more singles, Roan released The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess in 2023 through Island Records. The album was a critical success, but commercial success followed more slowly. Roan’s skill as a songwriter and vocalist couldn’t help but draw praise – but it was her practice and prowess as a live performer that drew Spotify numbers.
Roan’s rise up until this point had been gradual but more or less steady. In early 2024, the graph shot straight up in the air. Her dizzying rise at this point can be charted in four live events, the first being Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts tour in the first few months of 2024, which once again featured Roan as an opener. In the very first week of the tour, Roan’s streams grew by 32%. By the end of the tour, her monthly listeners had increased by more than 500% percent.
The second career changing event came in April, when Roan played Coachella, introducing herself as “your favourite artist’s favourite artist” (a phrase that later started playfully showing up when she was searched on Google). Her set went viral. In June, at the Governor’s Ball, she debuted unreleased song ‘Subway’, and hundreds of thousands of fans learnt every word. By this point, her streaming numbers were twenty times bigger than they had been at the start of the year. At Lollapalooza in August, she drew the largest crowd ever seen at the festival. Originally scheduled for a smaller stage, the festival shifted Roan to the mainstage last minute once they realised the storm that was coming. By the time the summer of 2024 drew to a close, Chappell Roan was one of the biggest artists on the planet.
What is it about Roan that has tipped her into ultra-stardom? It probably has a lot to do with the infectious quality of her April 2024 single ‘Good Luck, Babe!’, a lament of compulsive heterosexuality. It definitely has a lot to do with her larger-than-life, say-anything stage persona. At the Governor’s Ball, she performed as the Statue of Liberty, painted a coppery green from head to toe. She appeared on Jimmy Fallon in long, pointed nails and white feathered eyelashes, blinking slowly at him whilst discussing her drag influences. At Outside Lands in August 2024, whilst teaching the crowd the dance to her single ‘Hot To Go!’, she turned on the lackluster VIP section. “It’s so weird that VIP thinks they’re so way too cool to do this,” she said, cheerfully skipping over to them. “You’re not fun!” she screamed into the mic. Like much of what she’s done over the last year, the moment went viral.
@pinkponyclubhouse YOURE NO FUNNNNN #chappellroan #wlw #midwestprincess ♬ original sound – chappy
It’s also the magical way that she’s carried her corner of queer culture right into the heart of mainstream pop – not as a reference point for the artists already sitting there, not as something for mainstream pop to imitate or utilise, but in a manner entirely authentic. She’s far from the first artist to bring queerness to the stage at the VMAs, of course, but she does represent a new era of a queer pop, a new generation of artists ready to sing about the freedom and power that the community has afforded them. She’s sung about escaping religious conservatism and learning to love herself as she is. She’s given drag queens credit time and time again for inspiring her look, her performance style and her persona. In summer 2024, she publicly declined an invitation from the White House to perform at their Pride celebrations, citing the performative nature of the event when it seemed evident to her that the US didn’t stand for equality, particularly when it came to transgender people and the Israel-Palestine conflict. “We want liberty, justice and freedom for all,” she told the crowd at the Governors Ball, in her Statue of Liberty get-up. “When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.”
There are plenty that will cry ‘woke is trendy’, and that will treat celebrities ready to wade into the murky waters of social justice with a degree of skepticism. And while, yes, it can help your bottom line to be publicly very left-leaning, we’ve seen the opposite to be true as well. What’s refreshing in Chappell Roan is the impression we get, however accurate, of an artist who isn’t thinking carefully about how to address a community, but speaking from her community outwards. In an era where PR is the strictest it’s ever been, celebrities and their teams know more about social media best practice than they ever have, and we’re not always sure if we can trust what we’re hearing, seeing or reading, there’s a higher value placed on authenticity. For as long as we keep believing in her, Roan’s star will keep rising.
Chappell Roan will headline Reading & Leeds festival this August. Find tickets here