Chappell Roan is a twenty-six-year-old singer-songwriter from Missouri who made it to the music industry after ten years of hard work and multiple side jobs to survive. She is known for hits such as ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ and ‘HOT TO GO.’ She recently won Best New Artist at the VMAs 2024. This success story is one for the history books!
Your favourite artist’s favourite artist’s early start
Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, whose professional name is Chappell Roan, was born in 1998 in Missouri. She sums up her childhood as Christian and conservative, which she often struggled with. In an interview with Variety in 2023, she brings up how she wanted to escape that stifling life:
“I just wanted to feel like a good person, but I had this part of me that wanted to escape so bad. I just wanted to scream,” she adds. “I snuck out a lot, but I still went to church three times a week, you know what I mean? So it was just this dichotomy of trying to be a good girl, but also wanting to freaking light things on fire.”
Probably trying to find an escape from this feeling, she started playing the piano at around ten or eleven years old and taking professional piano lessons when she was twelve. She started uploading covers of famous songs to YouTube when she was about fourteen or fifteen, and she still continues to upload them. Some of her more popular covers are songs like Your Song by Elton John, Yesterday by The Beatles, and Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. These piano lessons and covers were a method used by Roan to escape a small, possibly backward-thinking, town. She probably felt misunderstood or lost, and her singing was a form that helped her feel more like herself.
In 2014, she uploaded her first original song to YouTube which is called ‘Die Young’. This got her noticed by Atlantic Records, who signed her on in May 2015 after she went to New York to showcase her music for them. In 2016, she took on the performance name Chappell Roan in honor of her grandfather who died of brain cancer that same year.
In 2017, she released her first single, ‘Good Hurt’, and a month after that, she released her first EP, ‘School Nights’ both through Atlantic Records. Throughout all of this, she was living with her parents, traveling with them to wherever she needed to go. In 2018, however, she moved out of her parent’s house and up to Los Angeles.
Towards the end of 2018, she worked with producer Dan Nigro and in early 2020, she released ‘Pink Pony Club’ which was shortly followed by two more singles, ‘California’ and ‘Love Me Anyway’. However, Atlantic Records felt like this was not enough, so they dropped her in August 2020. In a string of bad luck, her boyfriend of four years broke up with her in the same week.
For the next two years, she worked as a production assistant, a barista, and a nanny to support herself. She even moved back with her parents for some of that time. The good news from this time is that USA Today ranked ‘Pink Pony Club’ third on the list of the ten best songs of 2020. In 2021, Nigro started to work with Olivia Rodrigo on her album Sour which left Roan without a collaborator and unable to find one she liked as much as him.
The rise and fall of the Midwest Princess
In October 2020, Roan moved back to LA and continued to work on her music on her own while working in a donut shop and as a production assistant. She got a publishing deal with Sony Records, and by early 2022, Nigro was working with her again. ‘Naked in Manhattan’ was Roan’s first musical release in two years, and it was followed by ‘Femininomenon’ in August 2022. She was also selected as the opening act for Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour Tour and Fletcher’s Girl of My Dreams Tour. Her being the opening act for Olivia Rodrigo helped her get a shoe into the music world and start getting recognition for her wonderful talent from Rodrigo’s fans. She got to perform ‘HOT TO GO’ as a duet with Rodrigo on The GUTS World Tour this year.
In early 2023, she started her Naked in North America Tour. Each show had a different theme, and fans were encouraged to dress up. All of her openers were drag queens. In March 2023, she released her single ‘Casual’ which was quickly followed by ‘Kaleidoscope’, ‘Red Wine Supernova’, and ‘HOT TO GO’. All of these singles can be found in her album The Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess, which was released in September 2023 through Dan Nigro’s new Amusement label Island Records. This album was included in several Best Albums of 2023 lists, including Billboard, Vogue, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and more. The album has now surpassed one billion streams on Spotify.
Roan is exclusively a pop artist, but she dabbles in different kinds of pop music and rhythms for this album while also mixing different types of styles. She uses synth, rock, and disco styles as well as pop, with influences from the 1980s and 2000s, which makes it extremely easy to dance along to them. In her own words, she describes her style as ‘slumber party pop’. After listening to the album, it feels right. It is the kind of album where you can be screaming the lyrics at the top of your lungs in one song and swaying softly in the next song.
The themes of the songs in this album allow Roan to explore her queer side. She sings about queer hookups, queer heartbreak, and queer horniness. These topics have never been explicitly talked about or sung about in the music industry, and it is making an entire community of Sapphics feel seen, knowing that one of their own is one of the most viral artists of 2024.
Her most popular songs include ‘HOT TO GO’ where Roan is attempting to pick up a girl at a party and take her home with her which has a very catchy beat and has a dance not unlike the YMCA and ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ which describes a woman who is trying to deny her romantic feelings for Roan. Sabrina Carpenter has made a cover of the song and praises Roan for the song and her career.
While most of the songs on the album are played on repeat by people all over the world, there are a few songs that are not very well played. The songs ‘Coffee’ and ‘Picture You’ come to mind. ‘Coffee’ is the fourth song on the album and it is the first sign of a tender side we get from the artist. The more popular songs are all upbeat, even the ones like ‘Casual’ which is about a break up are upbeat and easy to dance to. ‘Coffee’, on the other hand, is soft and all about trying to avoid someone as the singer loves them but they do not share her feelings. Roan is discussing her trouble of finding something to do with this person, which will not lead her back to their bed and cause further heartbreak.
Electric VMA performance and well-deserved award
Roan got her recognition for the wonderful singer and songwriter that she is at this year’s VMA awards. The other nominees for Best New Artist were Teddy Swimms, Gracie Abrams, Benson Boone, Tyla, and Shaboozey, with Chappell taking away the award. She dedicated the award to her fans and to all the drag queens who have inspired her from the very beginning of her career. And, of course, to the LGBTQ+ community that has probably had this album on repeat these past few months. Not that many queer artists make such a skyrocket into fame. Not only that, but she is extremely open in her lyrics about her experiences exploring her sexuality, which draws the LGBTQ+ fanbase in all the more because everyone tends to explore their queerness in a similar way.
“I dedicate this to all the drag artists who inspired me. And I dedicate this to queer and trans people that fuel pop all around.”
Teen Vogue/Sara Delgado
She accepted the award while dressed like a medieval warrior in a chainmail dress from Julien Dossena’s spring 2024 collection from Rabanne. Her other outfits included a see-through dress paired with a medieval green cloak and accessories like dagger-like nails, a large cross necklace, tin boots, and a large sword. This one she wore on the red carpet. Well she also brought her red carpet, which was 600 years old.
During her electric performance of ‘Good Luck Babe!’ on the MTV VMA stage, Roan wore a full set of chainmail armor, and a full set of backup dancers were also dressed in armor. The artist never fails to impress, and this performance was no exception to that. I, for one, cannot wait to see what happens next in this artist’s career. I am Chappell Roan obsessed and very happy about it!
