Chappell Roan | |
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Born | Kayleigh Rose Amstutz February 19, 1998 Willard, Missouri, U.S. |
Occupations |
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Musical career | |
Genres | |
Years active | 2017–present |
Labels | |
Website | iamchappellroan |
Kayleigh Rose Amstutz (born February 19, 1998), known professionally as Chappell Roan (/ˌtʃæpəl ˈroʊn/ CHAP-əl ROHN), is an American singer and songwriter from Missouri. Working with collaborator Dan Nigro, her music is inspired by 80s synth pop and early 2000s pop hits. Her aesthetic is heavily influenced by drag queens and her music has been called "campy".
When she was 17 years old, Roan uploaded an original song titled "Die Young" to YouTube, signing with Atlantic Records shortly thereafter. In 2017, she released her debut extended play (EP) School Nights. Her 2020 single "Pink Pony Club" helped Roan rise to prominence, and she left Atlantic that same year. After a series of independent releases, her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, was released through various record labels in 2023.
Kayleigh Rose Amstutz was born on February 19, 1998, in Willard, Missouri, a small town near Springfield.[1][2][3] The oldest of four children,[4] she lived in a trailer park.[5][6] She has described her hometown and her upbringing as conservative, Christian, and homophobic.[7][8][9] During her childhood, she went to church three times per week and spent some summers at Christian camps.[8][10] In a 2023 interview, she said that she struggled with her upbringing and snuck out often: "I just wanted to feel like a good person, but I had this part of me that wanted to escape so bad."[10] She was later diagnosed with bipolar II disorder at age 22, a disorder which contributed to her difficult childhood.[8][11]
She began playing the piano when she was 10 or 11 years old,[12] and began taking lessons at age 12.[4] She performed publicly for the first time at age 13, singing "The Christmas Song" at her school's talent show, which she won.[13][14][4] When she was about 14 years old, she tried out for America's Got Talent without success.[4] At 14 or 15 years old, she began uploading covers to YouTube, drawing attention from various record labels.[15][4] She began songwriting as she entered her teen years.[12] She graduated from high school a year early;[16] she later described missing many childhood experiences in the "messy" beginning of her music career, including prom and her high school graduation.[17]
When she was 17 years old, she uploaded "Die Young", an original song, to YouTube under the name Kayleigh Rose.[2][18] She wrote the song while at Interlochen Center for the Arts, a summer camp that she said "changed [her] trajectory forever".[19] She subsequently traveled to New York for several musical showcases, leading to her signing with music label Atlantic Records on May 8, 2015.[20][14] She then began going by the name Chappell Roan.[21][14] She took the stage name in honor of her grandfather Dennis K. Chappell, who died of brain cancer in 2016; his favorite song was "The Strawberry Roan" by Curley Fletcher.[17][22] She has expressed dislike for her birth name.[22]
On August 3, 2017, Roan released her first single, "Good Hurt". The song was reviewed favorably in Interview, which praised her "striking maturity and surprisingly deep vocals."[23][24] On September 22, 2017, she released an EP titled School Nights through Atlantic Records.[20] Also in 2017, she supported Vance Joy on his Lay It On Me Tour.[25] During this time, Roan lived with her parents in Missouri, flying with them to Los Angeles or New York City when necessary. In 2018, Roan moved to Los Angeles from Springfield, Missouri.[2][26] She has stated that she first felt able to live openly as a queer woman when she moved to Los Angeles.[17] She later described feeling "overwhelmed with complete love and acceptance" after the move, stating that it allowed her to begin "writing songs as the real me."[27] From January to March 2018, she toured the United States with Declan McKenna.[15]
Roan began working with songwriter and producer Dan Nigro in early 2020.[28] In April 2020, Roan released "Pink Pony Club", which she has described as a "hard left turn" from School Nights.[29] The single was produced by Nigro, and its music video was directed by Griffin Stoddard.[2][26] Roan has cited a visit to The Abbey, a gay bar in West Hollywood, as the inspiration for the song.[26][27] She said that the song was about her desire to become a go-go dancer in Los Angeles, stating, "truthfully, I'm not confident enough to do that, so I wrote a song about it."[22] "Pink Pony Club" was not profitable enough for Atlantic, who dropped Roan from the label in August 2020.[17][30] Her boyfriend of four years broke up with her the same week, and she spent the next two years working as a production assistant as well as a barista and nanny to support herself.[17][10] USA Today ranked the song third on a list of the "10 best songs of 2020"; an accompanying description characterized it as dance-pop that "earnestly [celebrates] queer culture, acceptance and chasing your dreams."[31] A year after its release, Vulture described "Pink Pony Club" as "the Song of Summer 2021," calling it a "synthy infectious bangarang."[2] By August 2022[update], the song had been streamed more than 10 million times on Spotify.[22]
In early 2021, the success of Olivia Rodrigo's "Drivers License" shifted Nigro's focus from Roan as he worked on Sour with Rodrigo; Roan was unable to find a collaborator whom she liked as much.[17] She then briefly moved back to Missouri to work on her music independently while working in a drive-through.[32]
In 2022, Roan moved back to Los Angeles to continue working on her music independently while working a series of odd jobs, including as a production assistant and working in a donut shop. She then earned a publishing deal with Sony and by March 2022 was able to work with Dan Nigro again to create "Naked in Manhattan."[33] In March 2022, Roan released "Naked in Manhattan." The song was her first release in two years, and her first as an independent artist. It was described by NPR as a "queer girl bop" with lyrics that are "tender, nostalgic" and "flirty yet uncertain."[34] Roan also was selected as the opening act for Olivia Rodrigo for performances on Rodrigo's Sour Tour,[17][35][36] and for Fletcher on her "Girl of My Dreams Tour."[36] In August 2022, she released a second independent single, "Femininomenon." Earmilk described the song as "so fun and loud but so intricate" and noted that it was different from Roan's past releases.[37] Roan stated that the song, which was produced by Dan Nigro, was an attempt to "get away with being as ridiculous as I possibly can."[37] An accompanying self-directed music video featured Roan riding a dirt bike.[37] Roan released another single, "Casual," in 2022 after beginning work on it with Dan Nigro in 2020. The song, which has lyrics dissing a romantic partner who refuses to commit, was inspired by a brief relationship Roan had during the pandemic that ended with her partner saying they had met someone else. Morgan St. Jean additionally worked on the song, which has a sad sound inspired by Mazzy Star and Radiohead.[17]
In February and March of 2023, Roan was on the Naked in North America Tour, her debut headlining tour.[38][39] Each stop on the tour had a theme, with Roan suggesting outfits for fans while making her own camp costumes herself.[36][17] Inspired by Orville Peck, Roan chose to book drag queens as openers for the tour.[40] Concerts from the tour received positive reviews in The Harvard Crimson[36] and Variety, with Jem Aswad describing it as a concert where "you recognize when a new-ish artist's career is about to blast off" similar to Billie Eilish in 2019 and Lorde in 2013.[28]
On March 10, Roan released the music video for "Casual" under Amusement Records (Nigro's imprint of Island Records), her first release with the label.[28][41] On May 17, she released a single, "Red Wine Supernova", with an accompanying music video.[17] On September 22, 2023, Roan released her debut full-length album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,[42] and began her second headlining tour, the Midwest Princess Tour. The Midwest Princess Tour, ending in the spring of 2024, traveled across North America and had shows in London, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, and Amsterdam.[43] Roan donated $1 per ticket sold to the nonprofit For the Gworls[44][45][10] and opened each show with drag performers.[46]
Roan opened for Olivia Rodrigo's Guts World Tour in the United States and Canada from February to April 2024.[47][48] In Roan's first week of the tour, her streams rose by 32%.[49] Also in February, Roan was a musical guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.[50] In March, NPR Music released Roan's Tiny Desk Concert performance.[51][52] On April 5, 2024, Roan released the single "Good Luck, Babe!", described as "the first song of the next chapter".[53] Described by Billboard as a "well-deserved breakthrough", the song received 7 million streams in its first week, was listed in the Spotify Top 10, and debuted at number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100.[54] Also in April, Roan performed at Coachella.[55][54] At this time, Roan saw growing success on Spotify, with several of her songs listed on its Daily Top Songs USA chart,[54] and her monthly listeners increasing more than 500% from February to April.[56]
Chappell Roan writes most of her songs by herself, but has co-written some with other songwriters.[23] After the release of her debut single "Good Hurt," her style was described in Interview as "pop sound [...] infused with a dark and unsettling tone that underscores her intense, somber lyrics."[24] In 2018, she described her musical style as a mix of organic and electronic sounds, with a pop tone,[15] and as "dark pop with ballad undertones."[12] In her songs written while she was a teenager, according to Atwood Magazine, she "brought the hardship and turbulence of our teenaged years to life with a candidness and vividness seldom seen from her peers."[57]
Roan has cited inspirations including the artist Abbey Watkins, the film The Beguiled, and musical artists alt-J,[24] Stevie Nicks, Lorde, and Lana Del Rey.[25] A 2017 review of her debut EP in PopCrush compared her sound to the latter two artists.[58] She has stated that the song "Stay" by Rihanna inspired her to begin writing music.[12] In 2023, a Variety article described Roan as "glammy and pop and embracing her femininity and shared Gen-Z generational experiences, and also very queer-positive."[28]
While it began as a stage name,[59] Amstutz has described Chappell Roan as her drag persona[32][9] and likened herself to Hannah Montana.[60][61] She describes Chappell Roan as more open and confident, especially regarding sex, than her real self.[6][9][62] She is queer,[11][19][63] and she has expressed disinterest in dating men.[64][62] Amstutz was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder when she was 22 years old, and she has described therapy and medication as being helpful for her.[8][60] She said that she came to her "tacky pop star" appearance after discussing her inner child with her therapist.[11]
Chappell Roan discography | |
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Studio albums | 1 |
Music videos | 9 |
EPs | 1 |
Singles | 12 |
Title | Album details | Peak chart positions | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
US [65] |
AUS [66] |
CAN [67] |
IRE [68] |
NZ [69] |
UK [70] | ||
The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess |
|
30 | 50 | 44 | 37 [71] |
21 | 54 |
Title | EP details |
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School Nights |
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Title | Year | Peak chart positions | Album | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
US [72] |
AUS [73] |
CAN [74] |
IRE [75] |
NZ Hot [76] |
UK [77] |
WW [78] | |||
"Good Hurt"[79] | 2017 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | School Nights |
"Bitter"[80] | 2018 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Non-album single |
"School Nights"[81] | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
"Pink Pony Club"[82] | 2020 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess |
"Love Me Anyway"[83] | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Non-album single | |
"California"[84][85] | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess | |
"Naked in Manhattan"[86] | 2022 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
"My Kink Is Karma"[87] | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
"Femininomenon"[88] | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
"Casual"[89] | — | — | — | 96 | — | — | — | ||
"Kaleidoscope"[90] | 2023 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
"Red Wine Supernova"[91] | —[A] | — | — | 70 [93] |
— | 95 | — | ||
"Hot to Go!"[94] | — | — | — | 88 [93] |
— | — | — | ||
"Good Luck, Babe!" | 2024 | 44 | 47 | 84 | 15 [95] |
10 | 18 | 67 | TBA |
Title | Year | Director |
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"Good Hurt" | 2017 | Griffin Stoddard |
"Die Young" | 2018 | Catie Laffoon |
"Sugar High" | Ethan Seneker | |
"Pink Pony Club" | 2020 | Griffin Stoddard |
"Naked in Manhattan" | 2022 | Ryan Clemens and Chappell Roan |
"My Kink Is Karma" | Hadley Hillel | |
"Casual" | Hadley Hillel | |
"Kaleidoscope" (Official Live Performance) |
2023 | Hadley Hillel |
"Red Wine Supernova" | Ryan Clemens | |
"Hot to Go!" | Jackie! Zhou | |
"Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl" | Jackie! Zhou |