CHAPPELL ROAN TELLS HER STORY AT GRAMMY MUSEUM

Roan with Carlile and Nigro at the Grammy Museum (Photo: Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for the Recording Academy)

Seated before an intimate audience of admirers at L.A.’s Grammy Museum on 11/7, singer-songwriter Chappell Roan was asked to describe her mental-health routine. Roan, who was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder in 2022 and has since struggled publicly with the pressures of her newfound fame, let out a deep sigh, telling the crowd she could only wish that she had one these days.

“Everything is out of whack,” she said plainly. “Every big thing that happens to someone’s career happened for me in, like, five months.” She wasn’t complaining, just acknowledging the shock to her system.

“Chappell is a character,” she said, “but I can’t be her all the time. It’s too much.”

The following day, that run of success would continue as Roan was nominated for six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year (The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess), Song and Record of the Year (“Good Luck, Babe!”) and Best New Artist, capping off a remarkable tale of creative reinvention, perseverance, queer pride and a fierce belief in the communal joy of pop music.

As has been well chronicled here and elsewhere, Roan, born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, was dropped by Atlantic Records back in 2019 after a gloomy five-song EP went nowhere. She and her songwriting partner and producer, Daniel Nigro, had already recorded the song now considered to be her calling card, “Pink Pony Club,” but Atlantic was unmoved.

At the Grammy Museum, interviewed alongside Nigro by Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile, Roan intimated that she could understand why that song, which she belted out on Saturday Night Live in October, failed to land with her ex-label.

“I hadn’t built my world yet,” she said of the camp-inspired, full-throttle Chappell Roan experience. “‘Pink Pony Club’ was completely out of context. I didn’t have an aesthetic yet. I only wore black onstage. Everything was so serious. The second I stopped taking myself so seriously is when things started working.”

A turning point in her artistic evolution, she explained, was watching the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. “That scene when they’re performing ‘Radio Gaga’ at Live Aid and the crowd is doing that thing”—clapping their hands overhead in unison (clap-clap!)—“that changed my career. It pivoted. I thought to myself, I would do anything to make the crowd feel that way, to look out and have everyone do the same thing.”

Roan’s ascent was turbocharged by various festival appearances over the summer and fall, where, indeed, tens of thousands of fans spelled out the letters, “YMCA”-style, in “HOT TO GO!” and participated in the call-and-response bridge of “Femininomenon.”

“These songs were never meant to be hidden on an album,” she continued. “It’s easy to write such fun, campy things if you have other people involved in your mind. Because you’re not trying to write a good song so that other songwriters think you’re a good songwriter. No, I’m writing ‘HOT TO GO!’ because I want every person in the crowd to be able to do something with me.”

While Roan’s songs are often hilarious (something she shares with another Nigro songwriting partner, Olivia Rodrigo), there’s more to her than just a synchronized good time. Like Queen’s Freddie Mercury, she’s a freakishly talented vocalist. Also like Mercury, she writes and sings about queer desire and love with great pathos; if “HOT TO GO!” is her “Radio Gaga,” then “Good Luck, Babe!” may be her “Somebody to Love.”

Looking ahead, Roan and Nigro said they’ve made some progress on the follow-up to Midwest Princess, but it’s still in its early stages. On SNL, she performed a new, Shania Twain-ish country song, “The Giver,” but that’s less a change in musical direction than an expression of independence.

“At this point,” she said, “in the studio and onstage, I’m all about, what can I get away with?”