Chappell Roan is the most exciting artist since Prince

If you noticed a conspicuous lack of Chappell Roan in the year’s “best of” roundups, you’re not alone. But it’s no one’s fault that one of the best albums of 2024 actually came out in 2023. And if you too just discovered Roan this year, her ’80s-inspired beats, her Lady Gaga choruses, her fearless vocals and her 18-month-old album The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern PrincessConsider yourself lucky that you didn’t wait any longer.

When I, like the rest of the world, tuned in to Roan after their single “Good Luck, Babe!” When I suddenly saw them go to the top of the charts, I was floored. Online fan culture can generate a lot of hype – but every feverish word I read about Roan’s music, his charisma and his talent feels justified. As I’ve told anyone who will listen, for the first time in my adult life, I feel like I’m witnessing the rise of an artist like Bowie or Prince—and as dramatic as that sounds, I’m ready to print it.

Roan, born Kayleigh Amstutz, is 26 years old and has the reckless courage of youth combined with the unwavering emotional wisdom of a sage. She’s been in the music industry for a decade after leaving school early to move to LA – and was invited to support Olivia Rodrigo offal Tour that ran from 2023 to 2024 (the pair share a co-writer, Daniel Nigro), where she suddenly found thousands of new fans shortly before the release of her single.

Unlike Rodrigo, who became famous on the Disney Channel and turned it into a pop career, Roan is old-fashioned and organic, coming from nowhere, the eldest daughter of a vet and a nurse who cut her teeth playing Christmas carols in school talent shows. But despite her lack of formal training – Roan said on TikTok that she had been “singing off-key” for years – she has undeniable star qualities and is magnetic from the moment she arrives, not only because of her drag makeup and sparkly outfits but also, because she seems so infinitely self-confident.

However, confidence and appeal are the bare minimum for pop stars, and a humble origin story, while increasingly rare and therefore refreshing, is not in itself a recipe for success. What makes them so exciting?

Perhaps her most obvious unique selling point is that she has a strong queer identity that she openly explores in her music – which, if not quite as bold as Lil Nas X in hip-hop, feels punchy nonetheless.

There’s no trace of forced sexiness or pandering to the male gaze here: “Good Luck, Babe!” illustrates that her songs speak from a place of the empowered outsider. This single laments a former lover who rejected his sexuality and his true feelings about being with a man – “You can kiss a hundred boys in bars / Shoot another shot, try to stop the feeling,” goes the zesty falsetto Chorus over 80s synthesizers; on their 2023 album, The rise and fall of a Midwestern princess, She leans toward sapphism throughout, from the playful “Red Wine Supernova” (“I heard you like magic, I have a magic wand and a rabbit!”) to the tentative “Naked in Manhattan” (“Boys suck, and girls suck.” mine.”) never tried/But we both know we’re going to get drunk tonight”). Of course, the fact that she expresses her strangeness so explicitly and unashamedly in her lyrics – without the tongue-in-cheek, “I hope my boyfriend doesn’t mind” tone of songs like Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” – immediately made her one Gay made symbol.

Although her sexuality is foregrounded in her work, it is only part of the picture. Princess of the MidwestLead single “Pink Pony Club” was an instant gay anthem, but it speaks to a more general sense of self-expression and strangeness turning into self-acceptance – and also ties into Roan’s decision to move away from Missouri, where from growing up in a conservative Christian community to the bright lights of LA. There she spent years trying to break through and was dropped by her label twice, resorting to odd jobs to support herself before changing her stage name to Chappell Roan and becoming the drag persona – with flowing red locks and exaggerated make-up – created what we are now familiar with. Her beautiful, theatrical outfits are great, of course, but they also clearly convey the sense that this is someone who has come from an ordinary, even stifling place and is now choosing to express herself in the most generous way possible is only possible.

Then there’s the downright catchiness of the songs: “HOT TO GO!”, their most famous song, is a heady, upbeat yet yearning bop whose goofy cheerleading dance has been adopted around the world. In the music video for the song, released in 2023, Roan taught her grandparents the dance (which involves spelling the letters “HOTTOGO” with their arms) – this year she taught thousands of people at the Coachella festival this year, where she She reportedly drew a larger crowd than some of the headliners, and then thousands more at Chicago’s Lollapalooza, where she had the largest audience in the festival’s history. As she performed the dance in that Lollapolooza set, she noticed a lack of enthusiasm at the front of the crowd and said into the microphone, “I love that the VIPs think they’re way too cool to do that!”

And that’s it: the feeling of unfiltered giving of shit makes Roan feel extremely refreshing in an age of hyper-curated celebrity productions and well-thought-out social media. Even if you’ve never heard her music, you may have heard that she released a statement this year denouncing creepy fan behavior, saying that she doesn’t work when she’s not performing or in costume, and that she shouldn’t fend off harassment on the street.

It caused a stir – many said dealing with unwanted attention was part of the job. But just as many applauded her for that oh-so Gen-Z concept – boundaries – and for not being willing to compromise her values ​​to pander to a superficial celebrity culture. For Roan it really seems to be all about “the project” and the art – in contrast to certain contemporaries whose music only seems to exist as a gateway to the “icon”.

This is why Chappell Roan is known to be your favorite artist’s favorite artist – and now mine too. It’s the way she channels all of this, completely fearlessly, into music that is raw and unashamed and that is endlessly generous, asking nothing of her listeners but giving everything. It’s catchy, it’s fun, her personality is captivating and many people will identify with the topics she deals with.

But there’s something more mysterious than that – something indescribable, which is why their high-energy party tracks can bring tears to my eyes, why my friend, a straight white guy, can’t stop dancing around in his car, which is why half of these apparently come from sycophantic YouTube comments from people who have listened to death metal all their lives but suddenly found themselves starring in Pink Pony Club. And that’s why the whole world is eagerly waiting to see what she will do next.