“I’m just really proud of everyone who stuck with it. I’m proud of myself for sticking with it,” she tells Rolling Stone, not long before her final show on the (Olivia Rodrigo) Guts World Tour.
At the time the viral video was shot, Roan was working at a donut shop and had been dropped from her first recording contract. “I couldn’t tell how I was gonna make it work, but I did. So being on the Olivia tour feels natural and right. It doesn’t feel out of reach. I’m so grateful for everyone who stuck around.”
Now, Roan has released the first song of her “next chapter,” as she calls it. “Good Luck, Babe!” was written with Daniel Nigro and Justin Tranter and is “about wishing good luck to someone who is denying fate.” On the song, Roan is dating a girl who is trying to deny her own feelings for Roan, and likely for women altogether. “You can kiss a hundred boys in bars/Shoot another shot, try to stop the feelings,” she belts in falsetto on the chorus.
“I was just wanting to write a big anthemic pop song,” she says. “The song was a bitch to write.” The trio worked on the tracks for months before finally working on the raging bridge, a big Nineties pop moment from Roan that predicts the regret her negligent partner will face one day.
“I knew exactly what I wanted. I wrote it in three minutes,” she recalls. “I felt so much anger. I was so upset. It all came out and I didn’t add anything when I wrote it all done. It was a perfect storm.”
ON TIKTOK, A fan of Chappell Roan’s shared a video of the singer performing “Pink Pony Club” in 2021 at a Los Angeles fundraiser. Roan is by herself, playing the keyboard in front of small audience and not as glammed up as she is nowadays on stage.
The Tiny Desk set was transformed temporarily into the Pink Pony Club for Chappell Roan‘s debut performance on the web concert series posted Thursday (March 21).
The 26-year-old rising pop star was joined behind NPR’s literal tiny desk by an all-female band, each musician outfitted in a pink collared shirt and matching blue eye shadow, red lipstick combos. In a pink dress, drag-inspired, Marie Antoinette-ish makeup and a tiara, Chappell was clearly the star of the show.
Between her performances of “Casual,” “Pink Pony Club,” “Picture You,” “California” and “Red Wine Supernova” — all five of which appear on the singer’s debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess — the Missouri native even divulged one of her beauty secrets to the crowd.
She’s been hailed as a ‘queer pop superstar in the making’, Chappell Roan speaks about her acclaimed debut album, coming out.
3 years ago, a young Chappell Roan was singing Elton John covers on YouTube. Her hair was long and brown, her clothing muted, her demeanour understated, according ti the Independent.
That girl is worlds away from the sparky musician dancing on stage in 2023; red ringlets springing around her face and wearing elaborate costumes heavy with glitter and fringe.
Would Roan’s younger self, that one on YouTube, have believed Elton would be a fan of hers just three years later? “You’ve been called a ‘queer pop superstar in the making’ – I think they called me that too,” the Rocket Man himself quipped. “He’s a fan,” Roan tells me now, with a cheeky, nonchalant smile. “He loves it.”
