Bored with the dominance of Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa and Beyoncé? Well, there's a new pop star titan about to enter the fray. Welcome the Lady Gaga of the 2020s... Chappell Roan
ADVERTISEMENT“Your favourite artist’s favourite artist.”
That’s what Google suggests you mean when you search for Chappell Roan’s name.
The 26-year-old singer's explosion from obscurity to gain a cachet that puts her shoulder-to-shoulder with the biggest pop stars of the era is exemplified by Google’s own viral wink to the musician.
So who is Chappell Roan, and why should you be interested?
Born in Midwestern state Missouri, Kayleigh Amstutz grew up as a religious Christian in a trailer park. With no nepotistic leg-up into the industry in sight, Kayleigh learned to play the piano, auditioned unsuccessfully for America’s Got Talent, and started uploading YouTube videos of covers and her own songs.
Labels took an interest in Kayleigh’s YouTube videos and she signed with Atlantic Records in 2015, aged 17. It’s at this point that she adopts the sobriquet Chappell Roan after her late grandfather’s name and favourite song: Dennis Chappell and ‘The Strawberry Roan’ by Curley Fletcher.
For most artists thrust into the spotlight, the story would gain an impressive amount of momentum from this point, having signed to a major record label. However, it’s taken the best part of a decade for Roan to convert that initial boost into superstardom.
The length of time between signing with Atlantic and her first album release in 2023 is a big part of Roan’s appeal. There’s a grind behind Roan that’s allowed her to chisel out a perfectly sculpted pop star from the rough granite of a wunderkind.
In the years leading up to her eventual successes, Roan covered a lot of pop star training ground. She’s toured extensively as the support for Vance Joy, Declan McKenna and Olivia Rodrigo.
At the same time, she’s grown an extensive sonic discography for an artist without a full album. From her initial original YouTube upload ‘Die Young’ in 2014, Roan released first single ‘Good Hurt’ in 2017 to general critical acclaim before accompanying EP ‘School Nights’.
This initial incarnation of Chappell Roan was a deep-voiced sombre Lorde-equivalent singer. It’s a rich EP for such a young artist full of spacious instrumentation and sorrowful laments. Sensibly melancholic, Chappell Roan’s first attempt might be sonically enjoyable but it made little impact. In a crowded field, it looked like she would be quickly consigned to the bargain bins.
Change is on the horizon. Roan moves to Los Angeles and away from her parents for the first time. It’s in LA that Roan embraces her queer identity publicly and starts to move away from her Church upbringing.
Living proud and out in the gay clubs of LA, Roan met her production collaborator Dan Nigro. Nigro has written for artists including Kylie, Caroline Polachek and Olivia Rodrigo (he’s how Roan gets attached to her tour).
Together, Roan and Nigro get to work and produce the first of Roan’s singles that will feature on her 2023 album, starting with ‘Pink Pony Club’.
The second iteration of Roan was a sexually liberated one dealing with leaving the midwest. Released at the beginning of the pandemic to little fanfare, it wasn't what her label wanted sadly. After three new singles, Atlantic dropped her. Luckily, this allowed Nigro to sign her to his label Amusement, a part of Island Records.
ADVERTISEMENTAfter Nigro rode the wave of success of Rodrigo’s ‘Driver’s License’, another rebuild was necessary for Roan. Without torching the new sonically liberated mood created with Nigro, the newly recreated Roan was a bombastic drag-infused glamour princess. Draped in theatrically antiquated blouses, huge wigs and clown make-up, Roan started performing as if her stage persona was a drag act, instead of merely a stage name.
Finally, she was ready to release a full album, 2023’s ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess’. The Roan that released her album was now as confident a performer as she was an individual. It still took some time before her impressively constructed album would garner the fandom it deserved.
That all changed with her appearing in a few viral videos, most notably an NPR Tiny Desk Concert that introduced the internet to her huge stage persona, barely able to fit within the confines of NPR’s office space stage.
Since then, it’s felt like Roan is on the verge of taking over pop entirely. Her album entered the Billboard top 10, she was invited to the White House for a Pride celebration (she declined) and she performed at Coachella.
ADVERTISEMENTWhat’s her secret? In an area of music beloved by the queer community, fans love that Roan is an actual out and proud lesbian who embraces queer visual and audio culture while giving it her own unique spin. With every public appearance, Roan shapeshifts into a new take on camp, with outfits ranging from the hilariously tacky to the outrageously ostentatious.
Roan is also part of an online generation in a way many of her peers – crafted by PRs to be as uncontroversial as possible – can’t match. Although she has since deleted a lot of her previous posts on Instagram, X and TikTok, long-term fans love to trawl through their saved images to find the charmingly quirky person behind the wigs and the make-up.
It’s been a long rise for Chappell Roan, but through enduring such a lengthy gestation, she’s emerged a more fully-formed pop star than most around.
