Crowned at the Video Music Awards on September 11 as best new artist of the year, Chappell Roan embodies a colorful, queer, uninhibited pop. Who is not afraid to upset, or to be upset.
Medieval armor, a flaming set, dancers armed with swords: Chappell Roan’s performance on September 11th on the stage of the MTV Video Music Awards lived up to the annual high mass of American pop culture: a grand spectacle, designed to immortalize artists in the minds of the public, and on social networks. But if the latter relayed the show of the 26-year-old American, it was another video of her that, the next day, went viral. Arriving on the red carpet of the event, dressed in a priestess’ dress from another age and (already) armed with a sword, Chappell Roan sharply reprimanded a photographer who was asking who knows who to “shut up”: “You, shut up,” roared the musician, a fingernail adorned with dangerous spikes in the direction of the person concerned. If we (still) haven’t heard the latter’s response, Chappell Roan immediately continued: “No. Not me, bitch.” Atmosphere.
“It’s a heavy burden to bear and quite frightening,” she then explained to the microphone of Entertainment Weekly, who asked her about the “drama.” “For someone who gets very anxious when people yell at you, the (red) carpet is horrifying, and I yelled back. I yelled, and no one has the right to yell at me like that.”
The Limits of Celebrity
A few weeks earlier, Chappell Roan had already made headlines with a long post, posted on his Instagram account on August 24explaining that she intended to keep her overly pushy fans at bay: “I’ve spent the last ten years building my project non-stop, and I’m getting to the point where I have to draw boundaries and establish boundaries (…). I’ve experienced too many non-consensual physical and social interactions, and I just have to say, and remind you, that women don’t owe you anything.” Denouncing a “harassment” that she does not “deserve”, the singer added: “When I’m on stage, when I’m performing, when I’m in drag, when I’m at a professional event, when I’m doing press… I’m working. (…) I don’t agree with the notion that I owe a mutual exchange of energy, time or attention to people I don’t know, don’t trust or who scare me – just because they express admiration.”
And to those who would retort that she did, after all, ask for it, Chappell Roan wrote: “I welcome the success of this project, the love I feel, and the gratitude I feel. What I do not accept is shady people, being touched, or being followed.” And she ended, emphasizing her words: “Please stop touching me. Stop being weird to my family and friends.” And also: “Stop calling me Kayleigh.”
From Missouri to Los Angeles
Indeed, Kayleigh Rose Amstutz (her real name), has done everything to be a pop star. Born in Willard, a suburb of Springfield, Missouri, a city that is sometimes nicknamed “Buckle of the Bible Belt” (the buckle of the Bible belt, Editor’s note:) because of its large evangelical community, the young girl grew up in a conservative Christian environment, between a veterinarian mother and a nurse father.
Kayleigh, therefore, started quickly. On the piano from the age of 10, she tried (without success) to participate in the show America’s Got Talent at 14, posts covers of songs on Youtube in the process. It is one of her compositions, “Die Young”, which begins to attract attention in 2014. The young girl goes to New York to strike the iron, and to walk the circuit of concert halls, while it is hot. She lands a contract with Atlantic, releases a first EP. In 2016, she finds a stage name: Chappell (last name of her grandfather, who died of a brain tumor the same year) Roan (a nod to the favorite song of said grandfather, “The Strawberry Roan” – “the strawberry-colored pony”, Editor’s note:). And a character: a queer and colorful creature, which his installation in Los Angeles, in 2018, gives him all the freedom to express. In the American podcast Q with Tom Powerin October 2023, she explains that she compares it to a drag figure, the one she finally dares to be to be herself. And allows herself flamboyant looks. Her main inspirations: the medieval banshee, the crazy fairy, or the little queer bride of America, wearing a candy pink Stetson or combining prom dresses with outrageous makeup.
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queer princess
Chappell enjoys first success in 2020 with “Pink Pony Club”, title produced by Dan Nigro (who would become her regular collaborator) inspired by her desire to become a go-go dancer in Los Angeles: “But since I didn’t have the confidence to do it, I wrote a song instead.” The baroque dance-pop title, with a chorus to be sung by several people with arms in the air, is a hymn to the desire to be oneself and to become the queen of Californian nights, whatever one’s gender and origins. But the following singles did not follow: dropped by her label, Chappell Roan had to take on a series of odd jobs (production assistant, barista, donut seller) to survive. But she didn’t give up.
She will release her next tracks as an independent artist. And it works: “Femininomenon”, a brash pop cavalcade, expresses “the confusion” she feels during sexual relations with men, she explains to Cherwell, the Oxford student magazinein August 2022. “Something doesn’t connect. While with women it’s easy, different and wonderful. It’s a phenomenon.” “Casual,” an ethereal ballad, deals with a long-distance relationship that quickly evaporates. All are reunited in The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess (The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess, Ed.)her first album released in September 2023, on the cover of which she poses as a sub-prefecture Miss America, with a sequined dress, a tiara and kabuki-style makeup, her gaze frank but looking like she is already 1000 years old.
Her inspirations are as multiple as they are obvious, from Kate Bush to Lady Gaga, including Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac or Florence and the Machine, for stadium esotericism; all coated with a pop varnish that is shiny enough to drive the streaming platform algorithm crazy. Chappell Roan’s career is launched, she goes on her first world tour (in which she has the brilliant idea of theming each date so that her audience dresses in unison) and benefits from a new springboard when she is chosen to open for Olivia Rodrigo around the world. But it is a new composition that makes her go from princess to contender for the title of new queen of pop: Good Luck Babea title with soft 1970s-style synths and a chorus to sing (also) with arms in the air and everyone in unison. On the cover, the young woman appears with a medieval headdress and… a snout. The title deals, by its own admission, with “compulsive heterosexuality”, namely the need that queer people feel to conform, in order to be socially accepted, to the norm that would like them not to be gay. To those who refuse to admit it, Chappell Roan therefore says: “Good luck, baby.”
Strong head
Chappell’s followers are growing in number: Coachella, Lolapallooza… The musician is at all the major American festivals. At the Governor’s Ball in NYC, she reveals that she even refused an invitation to the White House to celebrate Pride Month, as relayed by NBC. Dressed on stage as the Statue of Liberty, she explains that she will only come when there is freedom and justice for all, namely for trans people, women… “And especially for all oppressed people in occupied territories.” In September, while she is on the cover of Rolling Stoneelle told the magazine that beyond the fact that she did not want to serve as a government endorsement for Pride, she would have liked to read poems by Palestinian women. But her agent advised her against it, for security reasons.
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Concerned about the Biden administration’s stance against sex reassignment surgeries for minors, Chappell Roan has not yet publicly expressed which side she would vote for in the upcoming U.S. election. But she told Rolling Stoneafter Kamala Harris was nominated by the Democratic Party, that it was important to vote, that she would do “everything she can to protect the civil rights of people, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community,” and that she felt “lucky to live during an incredibly historic time, where a woman of color was running for president.”
In the meantime, Chappell Roan intends to be the spearhead of her own army of fans. A personality less smooth than Taylor Swift, more “fun” than Billie Eilish, but whose songs cover a wide and ultra-effective spectrum of pop, it was in chainmail and matching balaclava, taken from the Paco Rabanne spring summer 2024 collection, in the style of disco Joan of Arc, that she went on stage to receive the award for best new artist of the year. Reading a few pages from her diary as a speech: “I dedicate this title to all the drag artists who have inspired me. And I dedicate this to all the queer and trans people everywhere who are animating pop, to the gays who themselves dedicate my songs to someone they love… or hate. And thank you to the people who are fans, who listen to me, hear me when I share my joy and my fears. Thank you for listening to me.” But above all, please do not approach it too closely.
