“I’m like the 18-plus version of Hannah Montana,” jokes Chappell Roan of her vibrant persona, which she says is inspired by her inner child. The embodiment of a Y2K pop star fantasy, Roan often pairs her long, auburn curls with bright eyeshadow, sparkly corset dresses and silver go-go boots or a pair of leg warmers.
“When I think of myself at 8 or 9 years old, I loved over-the-top looks with big hair and anything tacky,” recalls Roan, now 25. “I also loved drag makeup, even though I didn’t know it was drag makeup back then … I like to live out the part of me that was really never allowed to be herself.”
Growing up in Willard, Mo., which has a population of 6,300, Roan was trapped in the small-town mentality. “When I started [making music], I was very depressed, very dark and really serious,” she says. Roan learned to play piano by listening to her favorite songs and began posting covers on YouTube under her birth name, Kayleigh Rose, that subsequently caught the attention of record labels.
In 2015, the 17-year-old signed to Atlantic Records as Chappell Roan (a tribute to her late grandfather) and moved to Los Angeles. But after five years at the label, during which she released fan favorites including the dramatic rally cry “Pink Pony Club,” co-written and produced by Dan Nigro, she was dropped in 2020.
The letdown turned out to be a jumping-off point. “My world opened up, and so did my music,” she says. “My music reflected the feelings of my first time in a gay club, my first time falling in love with a woman, my first time feeling homesick — I had to go through all those experiences, that pain and suffering, to rebirth myself into where I am now.”
Roan worked through the pandemic to launch her career as an independent artist with songs like “Naked in Manhattan,” also produced by Nigro. She and Nigro met in 2018 and clicked by the end of their first session together, from which she emerged with the 2020 pop ballad “Love Me Anyway.” “I feel like once we were seeing the trouble with the label, that’s when I think we were both like, ‘OK, maybe this is bigger than us just making songs together,’ ” recalls Nigro. “It probably took a year before we were both like, ‘Wait, should we just start making an album?’ ”
As the project started to take shape, Roan and Nigro began discussing her options — including being open to a new major-label deal. “The biggest thing was finding people that fully understood it and were going to just [offer] support, as opposed to try and take over,” says Nigro, who launched his Amusement Records imprint earlier this year with Roan as its first and only artist. “We realized within six months — my manager, her manager and the two of us — that it was too much. Kayleigh was literally like, ‘I am nonstop on this. We need more people.’ ”
In early 2023, Roan and Amusement partnered with Island Records. She knew her second try with a major would have to be different and says it was all about “mutual respect” and creative freedom — and, of course, funding. “Island has a team that truly adores the project and doesn’t want to change it but only wants to understand it,” she says. “I met with nine different labels, took multiple meetings, and I was very meticulous about what I wanted and needed. I encourage other artists to remember that labels need you. You don’t need them.”
With her Island debut slated for the fall, single “Casual” became a viral “situationship” anthem, while her latest single, the pop track “Red Wine Supernova,” delivers on exactly what she wanted: a chance to let loose and be unashamedly herself. The song was originally written as a “sad, slow vibe” in 2019, as Roan continued to grapple with being “taken seriously” as a young woman and a queer artist. “It’s a battle a lot of artists who sing about queerness struggle with too, because you’re already in the territory of people not thinking that your relationships are as serious as heterosexual relationships,” she says. “It’s still really hard for me to be campy.”
Thanks to the encouragement from Nigro, the song took on a more silly, celebratory nature, filled to the brim with cheeky sexual innuendo (“I heard you like magic/I got a wand and a rabbit/So baby, let’s get freaky, get kinky/Let’s make this bed get squeaky”). “I’m just writing from a place that feels best to me,” she says of the end result. “It’s intentional to make [my music] feel like a party, because that’s what queerness feels like: It is a party.”
Roan adds that her music draws from disco-pop created by Black artists, compelling her to give back at every turn. She invites local drag queens to open for her on tour and donates portions of ticket sales to For the Gworls, an organization that raises money to aid Black transgender people. “Especially as a queer person who has the privilege of making money off the queer community to support myself, it’s important to redistribute funds.”
And now, after nearly a decade under her belt and a second chance in front of her — with her forthcoming album and fall tour of 2,000-capacity venues — Roan is also ready to give back to her younger self. “I hope that I continue to love myself and strive to find a healthy way to deal with this career,” she says. “This industry does not thrive off of gentleness. It thrives off of exploitation, unfortunately.
“I hate this industry,” she continues, “but I love it because I get to have so much fun.”
This story will appear in the June 10, 2023, issue of Billboard.
