FEATURE:
Modern-Day Queens
as the amazing Chappell Roan played incredible sets at the Reading and Leeds Festival last week. Receiving five-star reviews, I will end with one of them. There is no doubt that Roan is one of the most extraordinary and important artists of her generation. Her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, was released in 2023 and received massive acclaim. Since then, she has released stunning singles such as Good Luck, Babe! and The Giver. The Subway is her latest single. There is a lot of demand for a second studio album. More on that in a minute. Before that, I want to come to a few interviews with the Missouri-born artist. Born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, she is a songwriter known for her camp-inspired, drag-influenced aesthetic and queer-themed Pop music. Even if there was division over her being awarded the BBC Sound of… 2025 prize earlier this year (as there was hope a new or underground artist would be recognised), there is no denying the fact Chappell Roan is a superstar. Not only an exceptional and distinct songwriter who is inspiring fans around the world. She is also one of the finest live performers. I want to start out with an interview from The Guardian published last year. Chappell Roan explained why fame is like going through puberty. She also disused drag, sexuality and superstardom:
“As a 12-year-old, Roan was Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, writing songs in her bedroom as a creative outlet from her repressive Christian upbringing. She struggled with her sexuality and undiagnosed bipolar II disorder, and railed against her family, the church and the abstinence culture of the Republican midwest. “I was so desperate to feel understood,” she says. “I pushed down the gay part of myself so deep because I was like, that can’t possibly be me.”
It sounds lonely. “Oh, it was,” she says. “I was very, very lonely. When I was growing up, it was like, ‘Gay means flamboyant, gay man’ and lesbian means, ‘Butch girl who looks masculine’. There was not an array of queerness. And I was very mentally ill – suicidal for years – and not medicated, because that’s just not a part of midwest culture. It’s not: ‘Maybe we should get you a psychiatrist.’ It’s: ‘You need God. You need to pray about that.’”
Roan craved escape. She would smoke stolen cigarettes and listen to Del Rey on her porch at 2am as she plotted her way out. After winning a school talent contest, she began posting covers on YouTube. She honed her songwriting at an artsy summer camp and uploaded her first original song in 2014: Die Young was a doomy heartsick ballad sung in a husky Del Rey-esque tone. It led to her signing with Atlantic at 17. She renamed herself Chappell Roan in tribute to her late grandfather and released an EP – but progress was slow and she felt constrained by her sad-girl persona. After moving to Los Angeles in 2018, she wrote a song with Daniel Nigro that felt like a gamechanger: Pink Pony Club, a sizzling cabaret dance-pop banger about her formative experiences visiting a drag bar in LA. Feeling as if she had finally found her people, she started to acknowledge her sexuality. “Drag is like a spa for my soul,” she says, touching her heart.
But Atlantic wasn’t keen, and dropped her in 2020. Pink Pony Club bubbled under but didn’t translate into a viable career. Roan spent two years working other jobs to support her life in LA and, at a low ebb, moved back home to live with her family. Unable to shake the feeling that she could still make it, she gave herself one more year to chase her dream. She returned to LA, worked at a doughnut shop and collaborated with Nigro, who was also involved in Olivia Rodrigo’s Grammy-winning debut, Sour. Together, Roan and Nigro wrote maximalist pop songs that honoured her inner child. Roan filmed videos with friends, styled in thrift-store drag. The result of this scrappy, striving year was The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
Pop had been in a dark place since the mid-2010s: mumbled confessions over seething beats and sparse bedroom laments. But Roan is an explosion of colour. Her songs are fun, full of camp humour as she sings about the trials of love, acceptance and being ghosted by girls. Her voice blooms from a growl to an operatic trill and back. At the heart of it all is performance. “What would be the funnest to perform live?” she asks herself. “That’s how I write.”
The VMAs was her first big awards show. To perform Good Luck, Babe!, Roan dressed as a knight and strode out with a crossbow, shot a burning arrow to set a castle alight and chucked swords around. “I had that idea of me shooting a crossbow on fire for so long,” she says, laughing at her audacity. “Good Luck, Babe! does not warrant me coming out with a weapon on fire, but I was like, I have to do it. This is what I really would have wanted as my 11-year-old boy version of myself.”
While it can seem like Roan hates every second of being a pop star, she lights up as she talks about how bigger budgets and more agency have transformed her shows. “I get to feel the energy of other people, it’s so cool to have shows so packed and have so much joy in the room,” she says. “It’s fun that my parents are so supportive. It’s just cool to see my family get excited about things that we never thought were possible.”
And she is using her newfound status for good. Since Roan became a headline act, she’s invited local drag artists to support her (an idea suggested to her by queer masked country singer Orville Peck) and each show has its own theme. At her Manchester show, the theme is mermaid, and the atmosphere is celebratory and communal. One fan, Jasmine, resplendent in shiny purple suit and stick-on face charms, hails Roan’s “sense of freedom – I would never dress like this on an ordinary day”. Another, Emelia, in an astonishing homemade jellyfish get-up, says: “I’m gay and live in Newcastle, and a lot of people judge me for being quite flamboyant.”
For every UK tour ticket sold, £1 goes to the LGBTQ+ rights charity Kaleidoscope Trust, and at the merch stand in Manchester there are signed risograph prints selling for £100, with proceeds going towards aid for Palestine. Wearing charity shop costumes, fans Kenza and Freya say they admire Roan’s values: “She’s probably the only artist that’s really standing up for things that no one else is wanting to talk about”.
I am going to move to this year and a relatively new interview. However, I want to stay in 2024 and to a FACE interview. They rightly noted how Chappell Roan’s hot-blooded anthems are infecting and infusing the Pop world with something distinct and extraordinary. Now (2024), she is starting int o abyss of superstardom. Something that can be a mixed blessing for those in the music industry:
“The project of Chappell Roan, then, can be more wholly understood as a therapeutic experience, not only for fans who might have an idea of what those emotions feel like, but also for the artist’s younger self. “Now, I am the girl who does the Britney routine; I am the girl who plays dress-up. I’m making up for that time. When I realised that I should dedicate my career to honouring the childhood I never got, it got big quick.”
“Big” as in becoming a de-facto festival headliner in the US, touring through Europe this autumn and, hopefully, nabbing some music trophies. Nominations in multiple Grammy categories, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year, seem like a no-brainer. “My mom would love to go to the Grammys or the Brits,” she says. But Chappell is, at best, iffy on the whole awards thing. “I’m kind of hoping I don’t win, because then everyone will get off my ass: ‘See guys, we did it and we didn’t win, bye’! I won’t have to do this again!”
What’s more important to Chappell is the long game. “I feel ambitious about making this sustainable,” she says. “That’s my biggest goal right now. My brain is like: quit right now, take next year off.” Her mouth forms a small, tense line again. “This industry and artistry fucking thrive on mental illness, burnout, overworking yourself, overextending yourself, not sleeping. You get bigger the more unhealthy you are. Isn’t that so fucked up?” It’s a problem within the music industry, she notes, but also its attendant attention machines – TikTok, Instagram, the entire internet – which all feed on manic self-compulsion. “The ambition is: how do I not hate myself, my job, my life, and do this?” she says. “Because right now, it’s not working. I’m just scrambling to try to feel healthy.”
Listening to her talk, you can feel everything: the fury, the despair, the confusion, the resolve, the swirling depths of her personal storm. The resonance of Chappell Roan is not so much something to be understood simply from the music she makes or her aesthetic and stagecraft, but something you have to take in as a greater act of performance art. One where she dredges up the worst, most jagged edges of being a human who can feel angry, lost, jealous, vindictive, reckless, horny and scary-hot. Then she delights in it. She pairs it with dazzling synths, invites us in and turns the whole thing into an inclusive party, transmuting the project from she to we.
So, what does Chappell Roan need from us? If her success is to be understood as a collective movement, where fans feed off the music and the magnetism she’s able to dole out, despite the increasing crush of fame, what sustains her? What’s the one compliment that actually matters?
She peers out from behind the curtains of that unmistakable mane, having gone quiet again. “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh yeah, she’s really intense,’ which, whatever, fine,” she says. “But I don’t very often get: ‘Oh my God, you have such a good vibe.’ I think that just stems back to childhood, of [wanting] people to believe that I’m a good person and me believing it, too. So it means a lot when I hear that.” She thinks this over”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Walker
In an amazing interview with W Magazine from April, we get to learn more about an artist who is redefining Pop on her own terms after years of struggles. For anyone who has not followed Chappell Roan or does not know her music, then I would strongly encourage you to check her out. One of the greatest artists in the world right now. A modern-day music queen:
“Country music is known for narrative-based songwriting—it tells stories. I think that’s also true of your songs.
Country music taught me how to write narratively.
When was the first time you heard yourself on the radio?
I think it was in an Uber when I was on tour. I heard “Good Luck, Babe.” I grabbed my friend’s hand and I was like, “Oh my fucking.…” But I didn’t scream. I don’t sing along with myself. I never listen to my own music. If it’s out, I don’t want to hear it. I’ve heard it hundreds and hundreds of times.
Abra gown; Alexis Bittar bracelets; LaPointe belt; Marc Jacobs shoes.
What’s the first song you remember singing?
“Oops!…I Did It Again,” by Britney Spears. My mother took me out of gymnastics because I did the Britney dances instead of listening to the gymnastics teacher. I also sang, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Walker
At the Grammys, when you accepted your award for Best New Artist, you seemed to be reading from a diary. Is that your actual diary?
Yes. I’ve been keeping a diary for—oh my god—like, 15 years. I started in middle school. I love looking back at what I had to say as a 12-year-old. I wrote that every day was “horrible.” It’s amazing to see what would ruin my day back then. It felt as dramatic as my life feels now. Throughout my life, I had a fear of losing my memory, so I kept a journal to log all these important events. As I’ve gotten older, it’s been harder and harder to keep a diary. Sometimes, when I’m having a bad day, I won’t journal, because I won’t want to remember.
Have you been asked to be in films?
I met John Waters last night, which was insane. One of my idols! And I was talking about how there are only so many “firsts” you can have with your career. And he said, “No, no, no—there are all the firsts to go through when you become an actress!” And I said, “I’m not an actress—what are you talking about?” He said, “Every singer is an actress!” And I was like, okay, maybe I am! Damn! If John Waters says I’m an actress, maybe I am!”.
I am going to include some of a recent interview with Vogue, where we learn why there will not be another Chappell Roan album anytime soon. In the interview, Roan spoke about writing through heartbreak and her incredible new single, The Subway:
“The triumph of Roan’s Grammy-winning debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, has prompted much speculation about its follow-up, with fans scrutinizing her recent fixation on dragons, knights, and other medieval motifs and noting how the lyric video for “The Giver” features a DVD menu that scrolls past tracks called “To Be Yours” and “Read & Make Out.”
But “the second project doesn’t exist yet,” Roan clarifies. “There is no album. There is no collection of songs.”
She goes on: “It took me five years to write the first one, and it’s probably going to take at least five to write the next. I’m not that type of writer that can pump it out.” Nor does Roan see any creative value in churning out music under pressure. “I don’t think I make good music whenever I force myself to do anything,” she says. “I see some comments sometimes, like, ‘She’s everywhere except that damn studio.’ Even if I was in the studio 12 hours a day, every single day, that does not mean that you would get an album any faster.”
Besides, there’s so much to experience and be present for in her real life. Roan has spent the last few months living in New York with her best friend and creative director, Ramisha Sattar. “I have to see what New York is like in my 20s, ’cause it’s what everyone says,” she says. She’s enjoyed exploring the food scene and biking around town (“which is my favorite thing ever”), though not even pop stars are exempt from the city’s take-no-prisoners attitude. “New York is doing exactly what it does to me, which is kicking my ass,” she says, to a chorus of empathetic mm-hmms and nods from her team.
But these days, Roan is feeling optimistic about what lies ahead, which includes a series of pop-up shows this fall in New York, Los Angeles, and Kansas City, Missouri. “This pace is good right now,” she says. “This feels good and manageable. I feel like, for the first time in over a year, I can finally be excited about going to work and doing my job”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Luke Dyson/Reading Festival
I will end with a review of Chappell Roan’s Reading Festival set from last week. Attitude were among those who shared their love and respect for an artist at the top of her field. This is an amazing artist who will be talked about decades from now as one of the all-time greats. I think that next year might be the biggest of her career, whether she releases a new album or not:
“The sun struggles to cut through an endless, dust-choked landscape as tired, dehydrated crowds draw from the life-force of their gothic monarch. Defiant against the heat in sleeves, gloves and a full skirt, the figure brandishes a staff topped with a bat and wears a matching fascinator. Squint, and she resembles a giant raven.
This may sound like a scene from Mad Max, but in fact, it is the ever-eccentric Chappell Roan meeting her people at Reading Festival. It is a thrillingly serious exercise in pop.
Attitude caught the same set at Way Out West in Sweden earlier this August, where the star beamed and bounced around the stage like a woodland nymph, the innocent protagonist of a child’s fantasy story. Aspects tonight are a carbon copy — the intricately detailed fairytale fortress, for example — but ultimately it is an entirely different experience. Chappell herself is transformed, channelling pure Maleficent energy.
Not that she is reserved or stoic. This is a leg-kicking, hair-flicking spectacle – her and her all-female band never stop moving – with her booming, at times screaming, voice recalling the countless rock gods who’ve brought raw power to this otherwise nondescript London commuter town over the years. Her formidable vocal and unbridled passion peaks with a cover of Heart’s ‘Barracuda’.
PHOTO CREDIT: Luke Dyson/Reading Festival
What impresses most is the strength of the setlist. Chappell only broke through in 2024, has released just one album, and has suggested the next could be as much as five years away — yet she delivered 17 songs that were all killer, no filler. (Although Coffee does zap the energy between Red Wine Supernova and Good Luck, Babe!) It’s performed with the breathtaking confidence of a greatest hits set, and feels like a show worthy of a Glastonbury headliner. The irony? At Reading, she isn’t even topping the bill — that honour goes to Hozier.
“This one’s for my ex, who’s in the crowd tonight,” Chappell says, introducing ‘My Kink is Karma’, fixing the camera with a penetrating stare that sent chills even down this writer’s spine. This is my kind of reality TV show. Maybe this explains the seriousness? Whatever the explanation, people are living for it, with the Reading team boasting a knack for zeroing in the camera on the most dramatic of emotional faces in the crowd. (Conversely, an assumed technical issue sees the big screens intermittently cut out for the first few songs.)
“Thank you for loving me and standing with me,” Chappell tells fans at one point, sharing a rare smile. “This is a dream come true, seriously.” Then, it was straight back to game face”.
If some think that Chappell Roan is controversial or divides opinion, it is her honest and frankness that makes her so authentic and amazing. Not to say her career and life is perfect, but she is a very real and relatable artist who is the antidote to so many fake and watered-down artists. Chappell Roan is doing things her own way, and we should all be very…
THANKFUL for that.
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