Chappell Roan Just Wants to Be Hannah Montana

At this year’s Las Culturistas Culture Awards, a glitzy cross-pop-cultural ceremony hosted by and voted on exclusively by comedians Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, the Album of the Year competition was stiff: Beyoncé, Taylor, Katy Perry, the Into the Woods 2022 original Broadway recording (we stan) were all up for the top prize. But in a huge upset, the trophy went to — and this was the official wording — “Chappell Roan’s when it comes out.�

It was a fitting award for the 25-year-old pop singer, who was dropped by her major label following the release of the 2020 infectious glam ballad “Pink Pony Club.� But instead of a debut full-length, the newly independent Roan started dropping a steady stream of shimmery queer-pop singles (“Naked in Manhattan,� the auto-correct-inducing “Femininomenon�) and music videos. She then hit the road, extending her interest in camp and fantasy to a live setting by throwing together glittery costumes and planning themes for each stop, where fans dressed up and belted along to Roan’s funny, infectious lyrics about hookups and breakups.

Roan refers to her persona as a character, a performance piece, and, in a Gen-Z touch, a brand. But beneath the layers of rhinestone, she has a singular voice (which she describes as a “yodel�) and takes big, ecstatic swings with her music, from soaring hooks to uptempo call-and-response tracks that evoke a particularly raunchy pep rally. Fans will be able to hear that (and more) when she finally drops her debut project The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, on September 22 — a record she made with live audiences in mind. “There’s a reason why I want a party album,� she says. “It gives people an opportunity to have fun for a couple of hours in a room where everyone else wants to have fun.�

You’ve invited local drag queens to open for you on tour. What has that been like as states you traveled to began enacting drag bans?
Honestly, I’m not big enough for it to matter. That’s just the truth. If I were bigger, then I would be a little scared. I performed in Tennessee the first state to ban drag. The day that I had the show was the day they signed it. It’s just crazy. I want to be like, Fuck you! I’m doing drag if I want to! but then it’s probably putting the queens in danger. And the last thing that needs to happen is for them to go to fucking jail.

What’s special to me about your music is you’re not just making queer-girl music. It’s this really high-femme, over-the-top gay pop. 
Oh, for sure. I just want to be Hannah Montana. That’s what I liked when I was little. I also loved P!nk, Katy, Gaga, but not to the degree I love it now … I was so catty about pop music as a teen, but it wasn’t fair of me to judge it the same way I judge, like, Radiohead. Pop music is pop music. It’s not trying to be indie, math-rock bullshit.

Do you remember when you rethought your love of pop?
Yeah, I hated performing my old EP on tour. And I got jealous. I opened for Declan McKenna for a couple of months in 2018, and he would jump off the speakers, and throw balloons in the crowd, and have so much fun every night. I was like, I want to do that. I don’t want to do what I’m doing. This is too serious. How do I have fun on stage? How do I make this a party?

It’s one thing to want to make fun music. It’s another to write the sort of pop hooks you do, which are insanely catchy. What’s your process when it comes to making a hook? 
I just don’t care if I sound stupid. It’s letting the part of myself go that judges me as a writer. It’s really hard to allow yourself to let the camp in when the whole music industry is just about trying to prove how good you are. What I started doing was stop trying to impress the music industry and start trying to impress gay people. These songs that are coming out on the record, even a lot of the songs that are out now, have taken years to make. It does not come easily. Dan Nigro and I, we always say it’s easy to make a good song in indie rock, like, weird music. It’s hard to make a good pop song. It’s hard to make a pop song that feels stupid mean something. I pat myself on the back because I took years to do this.

I see what you mean. A lyric like “Get it hot like Papa John,� from your new single “Femininomenon,� is almost so dumb it’s brilliant. What’s your collaboration process like with Dan Nigro? And how do you land on a reference like that?
It’s interesting because Dan is a 40-year-old straight white man. I don’t know how it works, but I feel like I bring the queer perspective, the pop, and he brings the technical perspective and pushes me lyrically. But the process is, like, I listen to songs that I love, and I bring them to Dan, like, “I want to make this. This is what I want. And I want the drums to be like that, and I want it to be about this.� Every song is written with the audience in mind. So the song that I just came out with, “Red Wine Supernova,� most of my bridges are talking bridges, and that’s very intentional because I want to write songs that are fun for people.

You’ve spoken about how, when you were signed at Atlantic, they sort of didn’t know what to do with you. Then you went independent, and now you’re at Island. What did you learn from that initial label experience?
Being dropped hurt really bad, but it was also the best thing that’s ever happened in my career because I was free. And it’s not that they were holding me back. I mean, they were holding me back a little. Like, Atlantic didn’t want to put “Pink Pony Club� out. When I say “Atlantic,� it’s the powers that be. My team was like, Come on, let’s fucking ride! But if someone above you at the label doesn’t think it’s good, it’s just not going to come out. We had it written. We wrote it Valentine’s Day 2019. And it came out, unfortunately, April 2020, the worst time ever to release music. So that sucked.

But it was amazing because it opened up doors that I did not even know existed. Like, I was free to be trashy, and it didn’t matter because I was independent. So if anyone was judging me about, like, Oh my God, she’s not wearing stuff that even fits her, it’s like, Fuck you, I’m independent. I’m working in a donut shop, bitch! This is how it’s gonna work. It was an emotional rollercoaster. I was so close to giving up. I remember the summer of 2020, I was like, This might be it, because I had run out of money. I moved back in with my parents that summer. I was working the drive-through. I was a mess. I was just so, so, sick, mentally. And then I moved back to L.A., and something shifted in my mind where I was like, I’m gonna give it everything I got. 

You’ve been very open on social media about mental-health struggles. How do you handle sharing that at a certain level of fame? Are those boundaries shifting for you?
They’re absolutely shifting. It’s scary. I can see me quitting this job because the boundaries are so nonexistent between fans and me. We need to talk about how weird fan culture is.

Speak on it. 
I just did VIP on this past tour, and I’m not going to do it again. People feel like they can say anything they want to me, and it’s so dangerous because people think they know me as a person when Chappell Roan is literally a performance piece. Chappell is a character. I’m Kayleigh, and I am scared of people who have made a version of me in their heads that they think is theirs. Idolizing someone is so weird!

There are so many amazing artists who are not okay. That pressure and that expectation drive people into a place that’s unhealthy. No one’s okay because this job is impossible; you are never enough as an artist. I release a song, and I go live on TikTok that day, like, “Hey guys, ‘Red Wine Supernova’ is out!� Do you know what a lot of the comments are? “When’s the next one coming out?� The expectation is insane.

You said Chappell Roan is a character and referenced Hannah Montana. What is it about that divide between the self and the performance that interests you?
It’s too much to process if I don’t have division between the two. It hurts my feelings when people say mean things about me online. But it doesn’t hurt my feelings as much if they’re saying it about Chappell. Then it’s just them commenting on the art. I have to remind myself all the time: Art is meant to be judged. That’s the whole point. It does hurt less if I’m just like, Okay, they’re judging the project. They don’t know who I am. They’re not saying I’m a bad person. Chappell is a version of myself that is much more confident and extroverted and is the flirty girl. Outside of Chappell, I dress different, talk different, and I don’t do a lot of that stuff I say in my songs [Laughs].

And there’s a lot of “that stuff� in your songs. The hook from “Casual� is “Knee deep in the passenger seat / And you’re eating me out / Is it casual now?� 
My songs are so overtly sexual on purpose because it’s an expression of me that I wasn’t able to express growing up in a Christian household, in a Christian town that was very conservative. But I shot myself in the foot because unfortunately, when people hear those songs, they just assume that I’m that way. That’s definitely put me in some uncomfortable situations.

In terms of dating, or just talking with fans? 
Just what people say to me or the DMs. I feel really, really uncomfortable when people hit on me. I have a whole song called “Hot to Go.� It’s about how I want people to call me hot and not pretty because in high school, it was like, Oh, she’s not hot, but she’s pretty. But I still don’t want to be called hot. It’s so weird. It’s this dichotomy that’s so confusing to me sometimes, but people take it literally. It manifests in ways of, I feel really uncomfortable watching sex scenes. Like I can’t watch Euphoria. I feel awkward at strip clubs. I feel like I’m such a weird flirter because I get really self-conscious. But the Chappell version of me is not scared of any of that.

Your music videos for songs like “Casual� and “My Kink Is Karma� have these over-the-top costumes and fantasy aesthetics. What are your influences? 
Definitely Bratz dolls. I’m very much inspired by drag and burlesque. I love burlesque outfits because they’re so dramatic and pretty and sparkly and intricate. Showgirls, the movie, is one of my favorite movies, I love the outfits and the makeup. Euphoria stole everything from that movie. And Pinterest. Pinterest is my way of life.

Is your board private?
It has to be. It gives away everything. Every song has multiple boards of what I want the merch to look like and what I want the video to look like and what I want my outfit to be in the video.

After this album comes out, what do you see as the next big step in your career?
There’s a few things that I want to do. I want to sell out the fall tour. And I want to do a U.K. tour next spring. But that’s kind of it. I just love touring. The only Grammy I want to win is album packaging. My best friend and I, we saw all the nominations for packaging for the past 10 years and were like, Oh, we’ve got this in the bag. And we’ve been doing spells and manifestations to see if it works to win us a Grammy. But that’s it. I’m just trying to have fun.