Everyone and their mother are crushing on Chappell Roan this summer. With celebrity endorsements ranging from the past month to 10 years ago — including Elton John, RuPaul and Troye Sivan — she is truly your favorite artist’s favorite artist.
Although I’d been scrolling past buzz about Roan for months, I didn’t hop on the bandwagon until I came across a clip of her Tiny Desk Concert while lounging around one weekend this past March. Soft afternoon light filtered through my window as I scrolled on my phone and encountered the post. “You have 50 seconds to live,” it read, captioning a video of the last 50 seconds of the concert. In the video, metallic butterfly clips and a stray cigarette stick out of Roan’s cherry-red beehive wig and lipstick stains her two front teeth. Roan laughs into the bridge of her song, “Red Wine Supernova,” holding her over-sized wig down with one hand as she jumps up and down. I laughed at the lyrics: “Back at my house I’ve got a California king,” Roan sings before relenting, “Okay, maybe it’s a twin bed. And some roommates.” As the song transitions back into the final iteration of the chorus, Roan’s harmonies resonate over the full band behind her. When the video ended, I quickly swiped out of the app to find the original video on YouTube.
The full version cemented my budding obsession. Between songs Roan stops to take photos of her band on a disposable camera and mimes sending a text on a bedazzled flip phone, the gaudy appliques matching her chunky costume jewelry. She sings a mix of ballads with more upbeat songs, each one highlighting her voice’s strengths. Sometimes, live performances only amplify the weaknesses of indie bedroom pop artists, but in Roan’s case, her vocals shine.
Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, better known by her stage name Chappell Roan, draws inspiration from many sources, with people comparing her ’80s pop star look and sound to the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Kate Bush. Her aesthetic also takes inspiration from drag culture. Amstutz often designs and creates her own costumes and opts for over-the-top, glitzy makeup looks reminiscent of drag queens. However, the similarities don’t end there.
Chappell Roan is, in the end, a character, independent of Amstutz’s true off-stage self. As much as Amstutz is Chappell Roan, Chappell Roan is also the costumes and performance she puts on each night. While many singer-songwriters promise authenticity and a down-to-earth image, Amstutz is joyfully floating above the clouds and taking a Hannah Montana-esque approach to her creative process.
I’m just one of many converts. Roan has seen exponential growth over the past few months. From February to April, Roan’s Spotify listenership increased over 500%, landing her a spot in Billboard’s Top 100. A combination of opening for Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour tour, a late night slot, her NPR Tiny Desk Concert, a Coachella performance and the TikTok virality of her latest release “Good Luck, Babe!” launched her via bedazzled rocket ship into the public eye.
Since happening upon her Tiny Desk Concert, I’ve had her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” and ensuing hit single, “Good Luck, Babe!” on repeat. “Red Wine Supernova” is still my favorite song of hers, and I’ve spent the last few months dancing around my apartment to the chorus. “Good Luck, Babe,” which was released about a week after her NPR feature and was her first to hit the Top 100, is about a girl who won’t admit she’s gay. I spent many years with one foot out of the closet, trying my best to have complete control over who saw me for who I was. Thinking back on my younger self and belting the bridge on the drive back and forth between Ann Arbor and my hometown has been a kind of catharsis no other “gay girl bop” has ever been able to produce.
When I was first coming out to myself in 2018, there wasn’t much of a selection of popular modern music made by girls about girls for girls. I would open the Tumblr app on my phone and search different iterations of the words “gay,” “girl” and “music,” trying to find undiscovered, underground artists and songs which matched my experiences. I settled instead for crumbs from Hayley Kiyoko, King Princess and one Selena Gomez song where she has a crush on herself in the music video. Since then, there’s been an explosion of new artists in the lesbian music sphere. Still, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” is the most I’ve been excited about a gay girl album since the release of Janelle Monae’s “Dirty Computer.”
After watching Roan’s Tiny Desk Concert, I began sifting through her backlog of interviews and live performances. Laying on the couch and procrastinating studying for finals, I listened to a podcast run by marketing majors who informed me how 10 years prior Roan had been noticed on YouTube by Troye Sivan — who, like many other closeted gay kids in 2015, I was a big fan of. Ten years ago, he tweeted out Roan’s original song “Die Young” which she had written at northern Michigan’s own Interlochen Center for the Arts, urging his fans to check out her music. Shortly afterward, at 17 years old, her high school congratulated her over the morning announcements on getting signed with Atlantic Records. Since then, she’s been dropped by Atlantic, left LA to move back in with her parents and write music independently while working at a drive through, moved again to LA to give music one last shot, and got signed again to a second record label, Island Records. Having grown up in a trailer park in Missouri, she lives up to her title of Midwest Princess.
As I clicked yet another Chappell Roan thumbnail, I was surprised at how in many of her appearances, attention is drawn to her at times suggestive lyrics. Rolling Stone and Pitchfork respectively called her music “libidinal” and “eyebrow-raising.” At the same time that Roan celebrates her self-proclaimed “raunchy” lyrics, this assessment of her style permeates much of how her music has been received and discussed over the course of her recent rise to fame.
In one interview, Roan talks about why she “prioritize(s) horniness,” saying she felt uncomfortable with her sexuality growing up. Contrary to what her music might suggest, in real life, she is much more reserved when it comes to dating and flirting. However, her drag persona, Chappell Roan, is not. Brazen and proud, Roan can dance around on stage as this character and be released from any shame or embarrassment surrounding sex.
Roan’s identity as a drag queen is intrinsic to both her performance style and brand. To give back to the drag community, she hires local drag queens to open for her shows and donates a portion of ticket sales to LGBTQ+ charities. As drag has been targeted with attempts to pass legislation which would ban the performance art, raising awareness and uplifting the community in the way that Roan does is especially important. While not an inherently sexual art form, it is often considered as such by those who feel threatened by the gender nonconformity the community expresses. Conservative crack down on drag culture demonstrates how queer bodies and experiences are often oversexualized and perceived as threatening to heteronormative demographics.
Undeniably, however, the sexual implications in her songs are not just undertones. “Red Wine Supernova” which was listed on multiple “best of” lists in 2023, uses both playful double entendres with contrasting explicit lines which remove any ambiguity. Songs explicitly sung by a woman about a woman, while not non-existent, were much fewer and further between in popular music up until less than a decade ago. Those that did break the Top 100 were mostly limited to fetishistic radio hits like Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” which appealed more to male sexuality than lesbian audiences. It’s difficult to escape from under the thumb of male sexuality and fetishization in lesbian media and this could be one part of why Roan’s lyrics are perceived as so subversive.
While there’s always been suggestive music made by women about women, even within the past decade (See: Janelle Monae’s “Pynk” MV), the last four years of gay girl TikTok darlings soon became monotonous for their safe themes. Often described as saccharine, vapid or performative, artists like Clairo and girl in red didn’t offer enough variety to satisfy the masses. Soft skin, pretty girls and longing were out. On the come up — a femininomenon: enter Chappell Roan.
A stark pendulum swing, Roan’s own cheer anthem, “HOT TO GO!”, proselytizes a new lesbian pop era, commanding: “Call me hot not pretty.” Roan has no fear of stepping on toes with her music, owning her own sexuality and inviting others to do the same. Roan sings about women and her desires without shame in songs like “Picture You” and “Guilty Pleasure,” with both songs reclaiming the word “pervert” and its derivatives. Her music is pure unserious fun and tailored to fit a particular gap at a particular time — hitting the viral jackpot.
Growing up in the mid 2010s, it was easy to be ashamed of my own sexuality when the predatory lesbian trope was everywhere in media like “Pitch Perfect” and “Scream Queens.” LGBTQ+ representation has had a facelift in the past 10 years, and while there’s still plenty of room for improvement, the tide is shifting. Chappell Roan is the artist I was searching for all those years ago, and I’m having so much fun this summer singing, dancing and making up for lost time.
Statement Correspondent Juliana Tanner can be reached at jntanner@umich.edu
The post ‘Good luck, babe’: The search for a lesbian soundtrack appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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