EVERY FEW YEARS someone appears who’s a pop game-changer. In 2024, that person is Chappell Roan.
Her rise to fame has been meteoric, but it’s her reaction to success that has shown how much she stands out from your average pop stars.
For those who don’t know who the US singer is, a brief introduction. Born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz in Willard, Missouri, the 26-year-old started uploading music to YouTube as a teenager and was soon signed to Atlantic Records.
The stage name is a tribute to her late grandfather, combining his surname – he was called Dennis K Chappell – with a word from his favourite song, The Strawberry Roan by Curley Fletcher.
Her start in music wasn’t auspicious. She released an EP, School Nights, in 2017 and the single Pink Pony Club (about a transformative experience in an LA gay club) in 2020, but her label dropped her later that year.
She then released a few songs independently, but it wasn’t until she brought out her record The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess in 2023, on an imprint of the legendary Island Records, that Roan’s ascent began.
Working with producer Dan Nigro, she crafted an album full of 80s-inflected bangers, powerful ballads about sexuality, and maximalist pop songs about leaving her hometown for the bright lights of LA.
A stint supporting Olivia Rodrigo on her Guts tour certainly helped Roan’s star rise, coupled with performances at big festivals like Governors Ball and Coachella, and the release of a new single – Good Luck, Babe! – which became her first US top-ten hit.
By mid-2024, Roan was no longer a cult artist. Today, it’s obvious she’s destined for the big time.
But there are a few reasons why she’s stood out. For one, though she’s being embraced by the mainstream (witness the humongous crowd singing along to her set at Lollapalooza) she speaks to the outsiders.
There’s her glitzy, drag-influenced stage persona and the fact she dresses up for performances as everything from Divine (associated with cult director John Waters) to the Statue of Liberty.
Her approach is camp, queer, and an homage to pop culture stretching back decades. You can find within Chappell Roan’s image elements of David Bowie’s many personas, or Lady Gaga’s sense of the dramatic.
But while Roan wears her influences proudly, she’s never tied down by them. Instead, she pulls her inspirations together to create something that’s totally original.
Case in point: her Tiny Desk performance on NPR, where she evoked country-beauty-queen-meets-Marie Antoinette, wearing a huge red wig with a crushed-up cigarette pinned to it.
Then there’s her approach to becoming a star, which is distinctly at odds from what we’ve come to expect from women of her ilk.
Instead of just quietly accepting that becoming famous means giving up any semblance of privacy, she’s pushing back at what some fans think is normal behaviour.
The first big sign that Roan wasn’t going to accept fame’s flaws was an interview she did with Drew Afuolo on The Comment Section podcast on Spotify.
When asked about the impact of fame, at first she riffed about missing doing drugs in public, “rolling up and being a f***ing freak at the bar, or making out with someone at the bar”.
But the conversation quickly went deep, with Roan telling Afuolo that people had “started to be freaks”, following her and figuring out where her family members lived.
“This is the time where I said a few years ago that… stalker vibes… if my family was in danger, that I’d quit,” said Roan.
We’re there. We’re there. So I’m in this battle of… I’ve pumped the brakes on anything to make me more known.
This week, she went a step further, directly addressing her fans in a series of TikTok posts calling out disturbing behaviour.
“Do not assume this is directed at someone or a specific encounter,” she wrote below one video, before saying:
“I don’t care that abuse and harassment, stalking, whatever, is a normal thing to do to people who are famous, or a little famous, whatever. I don’t care that it’s normal. I don’t care that this crazy type of behaviour comes along with the job, the career, field I’ve chosen. That does not make it OK, that doesn’t make it normal, it doesn’t mean that I want it, it doesn’t mean that I like it.
“I don’t want whatever the f*** you think you’re supposed to be entitled to whenever you see a celebrity. I don’t give a f*** if you think it’s selfish of me to say no for a photo or for your time or for a hug. That’s not normal.
It’s weird how people think you know a person just because you see them online or because you listen to the art they make. I’m allowed to say no to creepy behaviour, ok?
Roan also posted to TikTok asking fans if they would approach random people on the street and get mad if the person said no to their requests.
It’s a big thing for a musician like Roan to make a personal statement like this in such a strong way.
Being harassed, stalked, and constantly approached by people is just seen as part of the job for those who are famous. Having to live life in your own bubble, and be photographed or filmed while in public is generally accepted as part of the game.
Increasingly, celebrities are going public about the impact of social media fan behaviour on them, but more often than not, they don’t.
In one way, Roan might need to realise that in getting well-known, she has unwittingly signed a Faustian pact – with fame comes attention, and some of that attention will not be positive.
But she’s also forcing her fans to reassess how they are treating her. She’s showing the world that behind every pop star is a real person, and she wants to be treated like one rather than as an object.
Perhaps she’ll get to the stage in her career where she has to retreat behind the celebrity bunker, but given that Roan has so far done everything her way, the hope is that she might be able to take some control over her fame.
So what does Ireland make of Chappell Roan? Well, we’re on board for the ride – Good Luck, Babe! is currently number one in the singles charts, and The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is at number two in the album charts, having fallen from the number one slot since last week.
The good news for Irish fans is that Roan will play at the Olympia on 17 September.
The bad news? It’s long sold out.
It’s all because, as Roan would put it, she’s become quite the femininomenon.
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