All hail Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, AKA Chappell Roan

she's currently on tour promoting her first album. i saw her for the first time at Heaven in London tonite - holy fuck.

started off with an incredible drag performance by inga rock and someone else whose name i didn't catch. chappell apparently always chooses local drag acts for her openers, which is very cool.

her set got off to kind of a rough start (no fault of hers) - for the first couple songs her vocals were mixed really low. also his girl next to me was singing every single lyric, very shrill and out of tune, directly into my ear

then they turned her vocal up and oh my god. she's everything. she's an absolute superstar and i'm so grateful i got to see her before she really takes off. she's an INCREDIBLE singer and has such a fantastic, warm, confident stage presence. she just seemed to be having so much fun and she had incredible chemistry with her band (aubrey on bass and lucy on drums - both were fantastic)

please do yourselves a favour and listen to this piece of pure american pop magic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePsqyPMIg6I

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Didnt mean for that to look sarcastic I’m just emphatically agreeing .

<3

i’m gonna keep on dancing at the pink pony club

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4WiXKGCJhg

really incredible tiny desk

That was very nice indeed!

"Casual" and "Coffee" are the ones I keep sending to friends. I've heard this in a few other places, but she seems like a great example of someone who grew up with Max Martin 2000s songs and fully leans into that as well ("H.O.T.T.O.G.O." etc)

Got around to the Tiny Desk this morning, sounds great live without all the layers of the studio versions.

knee deep in the passenger seat and you're eating me ouuuuuut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RKqOmSkGgM

pink pony club is an earworm

Coachella set happening at the moment, the audience is crazy and knows every word:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13QtsdFLVG4

Really a fantastic set, and I think it wasn’t a mixing/editing thing but the audience really was so intensely connected to the music. She did great.

I saw her live this past Monday in KC, and the entire audience was exactly like that, intensely singing every word, even for the new song that came out just a few days before. Plus they were dressed in some variation of pink cowboy gear (like, 90% of the crowd was in pink cowboy gear, we didn't get the memo). It sold out one venue, got moved to a larger venue, and sold it out. If that's happening across the country - which I imagine is the case - she's truly on the rise. And deservedly so...

Seems like she just keeps building momentum, just based on from friends and others discovering her in the past months + hearing her in coffee shops all the time.

Thinking how part of the fun of this phenomenon is that the album has been out a long time, so individual songs don't feel like singles but instead have equal presence out there.

She's good but I gotta say, I started listening to this, listened to it a lot for two weeks, then ran out of interest in it and haven't listened to it since. But it's good! Just... not with staying power for me.

Went to see Katie Pruitt last week and she did an acoustic cover of "Casual" that successfully lodged that tune in my head for three days straight.

similar to when this was happening with “espresso,” i think when a song/artist experiences a lot of growth in a short amount of time, spotify is set up to assume this will be of interest to most of their users and therefore it gets recommended liberally https://t.co/76GxtcpWo0 pic.twitter.com/qyRApPrukf

— jaime brooks ☭ (@elite_gz) June 7, 2024

lots of requests for chappell roan at the gay bar lately so i hear

people who use spotify live inside a little spotify created bubble that the rest of us exist outside of, and it distorts their understanding of the world around them. imo

i for one am shocked that spotify is recommending sabrina carpenter and chappell roan to listeners who enjoy pop music

xpost 100%. for an increasing number of people, there is basically no music outside Spotify, imo.

which sucks real bad.

"good luck, babe" is the first thing from her that isn't really annoying

I think people habitually underestimate the power of social media when discussing these phenomena. If you move in any kind of sub-50-yr-old queer-ish circles online it is basically impossible to avoid suffocation under an avalanche of Chappell Roan references. This seemed to start about a month ago.

It's difficult to untangle cause and effect here - did Spotify's algorithmic amplification effect precede or follow the above? Almost certainly they feed on each other. But in an era when traditional music journalism manages less than ever, I think a lot of the void that has left has been filled by people deciding what to check out because of the "conversations" they see happening around them online and a desire to be able to at least understand if not join in.

In this specific case an Australian parody IG page modelled on the Onion published a story a few days ago which both reflects the above and ironically adds to it: "Local Lesbian Has Her Subaru Keys Revoked After Revealing She Doesn't Know Who Chappell Roan Is".

*In an era when traditional music journalism matters less than ever

I would argue that social media and especially vertical content platforms (tiktok, reels) are driving what new acts and artists are breaking now. Spotify is definitely the tail of the dog at this point. Labels compete in digital marketing on those platforms, playlisting is kind of cheugy when you're talking about discovering new acts, lol

In this specific case an Australian parody IG page modelled on the Onion published a story a few days ago which both reflects the above and ironically adds to it: "Local Lesbian Has Her Subaru Keys Revoked After Revealing She Doesn't Know Who Chappell Roan Is".

Meanwhile, Hard Times (the punk-rock Onion) just did "Man To Be Honored at GLAAD Awards for Giving Bisexual Girlfriend a Ride to Chappell Roan Concert."

When Azealia's right...

I dunno, i feel like lots of female artists really wanna do this weird Lolita shit well into their 50/s and she sings like a WOMAN. That’s what i appreciate the most. The truth and reality in her neeeeeed to express. And how cathartic it is.

— Azealia Banks (@CHEAPYXOMIAMI) June 22, 2024

I saw buzz about the album somewhere or other late last year, listened to it and liked it a lot (still do). I was surprised at the time that there wasn't MORE buzz about her, because she seemed pretty buzzable. I think festival season was primed for her, she'd built up a good following and she rocked those shows. Her Bonnaroo set got moved up to the 2nd-biggest stage, probably on the basis of the Coachella buzz plus whatever LiveNation was gleaning from users on the festival app. As with anyone who blows up, I don't think it's any one thing pushing her, it's mostly that she made a good pop album that is in line with the tastes of the moment — smile, Dan Nigro! — and she's spent the last year building audiences on the road. Opening for Olivia Rodrigo no doubt helped.

But yeah, I did just see a Facebook friend in her 40s asking "who the hell is Chappell Roan and am I a bad lesbian for not knowing?"

She's insanely charismatic and her songs are brilliant. Feels like the most deserving Huge Popstar Blowup in a long time.

Her NPR Tiny Desk was my first exposure to her, it’s an incredible performance and I immediately understood why she was a star. Listening to the album after was slightly disappointing - I mean the songs are great, but something about the production didn’t quite click for me. “Good luck, babe!” is excellent though

My wife is a very casual music fan in general, but recently she's been getting kind of obsessed with individual artists, and Chappell Roan is the latest.

(Before that, it was Taylor.)

She talked about this when she was on Fallon, but it's pretty funny that some fan inside Google made it do this in the "Did you mean" line.

https://i.imgur.com/gts393u.png

"some random twink that works at Google" as she put it lol

I haven't paid attention to any pop for the last 20 years, but recently became a taylor swift fan. Then I randomly heard good luck babe and thought it was phenomenal, the album ain't half bad either.

"Good Luck Babe" doesn't have the same kind of charisma as the best tracks on the album in my view

"Good Luck Babe" is quite the earworm, caught me more than "Red Wine Supernova" (which was also good). I should check out the album

maybe 200 20-somethings at the gay bar singing "good luck babe" at the top of their lungs last saturday night.

I'm genuinely surprised y'all embrace her! She's fine. I'm figuring out what about her voice bothers me.

Current 20-somethings were pre-teens when Katy Perry's singles were omnipresent. I feel like Roan's big numbers play into that nostalgia while making the lyrics young-and-single-adult. The album deepens from there with "Coffee" and other non-anthems.

oh my god lol. how can i even describe it. i feel like you either hear it or you don't. there's a sour confidence that offsets the purest of feeling. there's a yelpiness and then grade-a organic midwestern honey. her tone when she's at her most direct, yearning and heartfelt just melts my armor away. carly rae jepsen would kill for this kind of voice. that probably does a disservice to crj. i just mean that crj, her thing, it could have been huge if she had this kind of voice.

there's also an incredibly refreshing honesty in the drive of her heart through the lyrics. (is she writing these songs or does she have help, i genuinely don't know?). like, she isn't dumb, but she knows what she wants and it's l o v e. worldliness is a part of that but it isn't all of it. uncompromising. the feeling when all these kids are singing along to it warms my heart. it's a wholesome moment. you either feel it or you're soulless (j/k ;)).

xp as far as i can tell, at least from the 3 big songs, there's something less cookie cutter about her "american girl" persona than perry. she's like "american girl" post billie eilish or something. the american girl persona just feels more natural somehow. i hope she doesn't succumb to being another katy perry, that would suck.

oh, she's more convincing than Perry.

Thanks, map. I'll give the album another try. I do hear the worldliness.

tbh i didn't really get what the fuss was all about until i heard all of those kids singing it.

i feel like there's also a kind of "fartiness" to the production on the songs, like a brown plastic sound (sorry for the gross metaphor), it seems to communicate that she doesn't want to be seen that she takes herself too seriously. i noticed the same style in the sabrina carpenter songs.

I don't know if this holds water, but thinking again of 20-somethings growing up on Kidz Bop versions of pop songs, with their chintzier production, and playing a bit into that nostalgia (unbridled kid-like singalongs, but also as Azaelia said, songs about being a woman, not a girl).

Oh, well if there's a fartiness to this, I guess I'll go check it out.

Chappell Roan is expected to chart five singles on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 (dated July 6th, 2024), all at new peaks:

#11. (+5) Good Luck, Babe!
#38. (+17) Hot To Go!
#46. (+8) Red Wine Supernova
#66. (+24) Pink Pony Club
#83. (NEW) Casual pic.twitter.com/70qmjvBafv

— Talk of the Charts (@talkofthecharts) June 30, 2024

The production is the only weak point to me, tho its datedness makes it feel kind of relatably affordable or something… the Midwest adopting like an old idea of mainstreamed indie, idk. But she’s a huge talent / persona / force of nature, her star& vision makes the production feel like it’s struggling keep up with her like she just wills these aspiring 2008 Robyn sounds into good-enough canvasses …. Imho

she's not even headlining her day at Outside Lands in SF and I think that's quickly becoming clear that she should

i mean...second in line behind Sturgill Simpson? in San Francisco? What?

xp interesting article, nice photos. thanks for sharing.

Not just songs from the album, but the crowd sang along with the newer unreleased ones as well ("Subway" being the latest):

Chappell Roan absolutely packs Grant Park at 5pm, the humongous crowd singing songs from The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess at the top of their lungs.
It is electric. And it’s pink. Very pink.#OnAssignment for @BlockClubCHI with @melodymercadotv https://t.co/2BqGjOiz7e pic.twitter.com/hhVxRTfiqr

— Colin Boyle (@colinbphoto) August 1, 2024

help she's in wrestling gear and her drummer is drumming in a wrestling ring... help....

Your group should be her opener.

all my "quick video" feeds (idk what we're supposed to call them) on social media have gone from zero CR content to somewhere around 1/3rd CR content in the past week.

Really good read, this.

https://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2024/08/06/a-feminomenology-of-chappell-roan/

that's a nice read. i've played the dancier songs every weekend all summer and last night they sounded better than ever? instant classics.

I was at karaoke on Friday night and someone did "Red Wine Supernova," and the whole room sang along with it, even getting the California King spoken part down just right.

i think "red wine supernova" is probably still my fav, what a rush

Really great Outside Lands performance— I think she’s figured out how to handle the big crowds easy.

yeah that was good, though basically the same as her other festival sets I've seen online recently. she really should have had the headlining slot. also why is the outside lands amazon stream torturing me with shit now and apparently going to skip slowdive?

I suppose if anyone else here has opened a social media site (or even a news site) in the past week they've been innundated with reposts of her begging her psycho fans to leave her the fuck alone. I'm not on twitter or tik tok so have no idea how well that's playing with said psycho fans, but reaction in most places seems to be supportive; on the other hand, it feels like this video is getting more press than anything else she's done. I'm also curious because I hadn't actually heard of any instances of her being harassed or grabbed by people while out in public. It does seem she isn't quite prepared for the level of fame she's reached, which is on her management and the label, I think. It did make me think about ehe report above that she 'wasn't nice' when visiting a store.

There are promotional videos from her label that interview her grandparents and spend a lot of time in her hometown (not to mention the Hot to Go video); I'm surprised those haven't been taken down since that's likely what's leading young weirdos to stalk out her family's home etc.

I find behavior by 'stans' online and in person in recent years really sickening and weird. I honestly don't think if I saw her outside without makeup and an outfit I would even recognize her, she literally looks like any other white woman in her 20's.

it's also, I think, naive of her to think that she could continue to live her life in an anonymous way because I don't think that is true for anyone who achieves even a little fame, and has always been the case. But people really should not be so weird to celebrities.

I think she went from "kinda famous but not instantly recognizable" to "so mega famous can't walk down the street" very quickly.

she went from "barely famous at all" to "so mega famous can't walk down the street" very quickly

It's naive inasmuch as it has to be truly disorienting, and is probably literally unimaginable until you're in it. And so few people comparatively reach that state, quickly or not, that it is hard to appreciate the impact from outside it.

Anyway I’ve watched this performance approximately 7 million times. I think it’s extraordinary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL92xyS0IEM

shazamed a song while at a restaurant the other night and it was 'red wine supernova'. got my ass

i'm kinda curious if 'love tempo' by quando quango would go over well at a chappell roan night. feel like you could almost mix it into 'hot to go' lol

so ... maybe someone closer to this world can tell us ... is Nigro just white hot / untouchable at this point? I can only assume he's the new "it man"? or has he been the "it man" for a while and i just thought it was, like, Jack Antonoff or something, like how i'm still saying "very demure" even though that was over a month ago?

guy seems like he's on a crazy run right now.

do i need to go back and listen to As Tall As Lions???

yes

there's a pretty big difference in the volume of artists that those two producers work with, even though there's other broad similarities between them, that make that comparison feel somewhat ill fitting to me. i also feel like nigro's taste is quite present in his work, or at least he seems to seek out or connect w/ artists who have similar musical inspirations, whereas antonoff's whole thing is more of a rick rubin-esque taking in wayward souls and guiding them thru the process of finding their own inspiration type situation. i think nigro more so has a "sound" whereas the frustrating or interesting or both aspect of antonoff's work is the absence of such a fingerprint

to me nigro exists on some continuum between antonoff and (nigro's former collaborator) ariel rechtshaid

As you do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65m4u4IxZLg

i'm kinda curious if 'love tempo' by quando quango would go over well at a chappell roan night. feel like you could almost mix it into 'hot to go' lol

― flopson, Sunday, August 25, 2024 12:30 AM

This sounds like a fabulous idea.

This feels like one of those “I hope she plays “Hot To Go!”” Memes.

“Girl this is a local DJ night playing Quando Quango”.

this is a good performance but not nearly as good as her doing the same song on Fallon in the spring.

I hope she stays real and weird.

goddamn this woman's got jams

H.O.T. T.O. G.O.OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"Casual" is a masterpiece of relatable devastation

HTG was my gateway but Casual is my current fave.

my fav right now is the deranged "my kink is karma". i love vamping to it at the club, feigning orgasm to an ex having a meltdown

It's hot when you're going through hell
And you're hating yourself, I'm feeling myself
It's hot when you know that you're caught
And you're getting pissed off, it's getting me off
It's hot, it's hot, oh god, oh god, oh god

htg i never loved that much for whatever reason. literally every song in the album is good to great though.

recently awakened to "naked in manhattan"

touch me baby (touch me touch me touch me touch me!)

could not stop listening to "hot to go!" for the past month bc my life was full of lesbian intrigue... and remains so

Lesbian Intrigue is your side project name, natch.

is the weather in Manhattan nice now? I'd like to be naked there.

oh it’s been SO nice

The Poppa Johns song was my least fave for a while but I’m fully assimilated now. Any good non-album stuff?

sorry but between the whole lack of boundaries thing (which yes I know is not exclusive to her fans) and now this whole "why isn't she endorsing Kamala" thing, does her music emit some kind of frequency that makes her fans especially stupid

no artist deserves a fanbase this illiterate

I think it’s… unsurprising… that a pop star whose appeal seems partly grounded in her relatability to people who spend a lot of time kneedeep in their twitter feeds publicly revelling in their emotional damage and idiosyncrasies would then be vulnerable to a portion of that fanbase imposing their emotional damage and idiosyncrasies back onto her.

not sure this backlash is coming from chapell roan fans so much as fans of being a scold on the internet

no artist deserves a fanbase this illiterate

this is the modern day fanbase of pretty much....everyone now, sadly

the issue is not w/ her fanbase, which has large membership crossovers w/ the stan communities of other pop stars. the difference is that she is willing to tell the truth about the experience of being on the other end of that relationship, and she is apparently willing to engage her fans in a near constant battle over boundaries ... most pop stars do not want to do this

in all the press the eras tour spawned about the magic that is the relationship between taylor swift and her fans, i'm not sure there was ever much unpacking over how her relationship w/ her fans is, actually, insane. i think there is a downstream effect on the chappell roans of the world who are having to contend w/ an environment where the biggest pop star in the world has normalized i.e. having her fans over to her house for brownies. i don't think the generation of current day pop fans responds well when pop stars actually try and establish boundaries (for many reasons of course, the largest of which is certainly not taylor swift, but w/in the sphere of modern music pop stardom in particular i think it's relevant)

it crops up in other areas too. reality TV stars get a TON of terrible fan behavior, judgment onslaughts, etc., without even the resources a typical popstar might use to insulate themselves a little. and it doesn't even matter if 99% of the fans are saying "hey other fans, stop doing creepy stuff," because 1% of five million or twenty million people is an untameable horde of people projecting their fandom and mediated sense of "access" into some terrifying presumptions of intimacy etc. etc.

I also kind of think part of what we're seeing is just an artist becoming really, really famous. saying its about her 'stans' as if the people acting like psychos were all day-ones instead of just a transition from one tier of fame to another, much more exposed one, is mischaracterizing, I think, *why* people are acting so nuts (ie that shes become famous with more people than many of her ostensible peers)