Chappell Roan|The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess Chappell Roan

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Released on 9/22/23 by Chappell Roan PS - Island
Main artists: Chappell Roan
Genre: Pop

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It's easy to imagine that Chappell Roan emerged fully formed as a beehive-wearing queer icon, but Kayleigh Rose Amstutz was plucked from YouTube—via Missouri—at 17, then signed and dropped by a major label in the space of a year. She just needed the right moment: for people to grow weary of Taylor Swift's butter-wouldn't-melt earnestness. And Roan's clever, campy, exaggerated moment is now. How else could a delirious song like "HOT TO GO!" crack the Billboard Top 20? Shiny plastic New Wave with sex-positive lyrics ("And baby, don't you like this beat?/ I made it so you'd sleep with me!") and a monster cheer-squad chorus, it's a confetti cannon of a song. But the key to camp is self-awareness, and Roan knowingly revels in playful ridiculousness, making up words like "Femininomenon"—the hard-to-say title of a song that starts off as melodramatic as a Douglas Sirk movie before the shrieked line "Dude, can you play a song with a fucking beat?" (punchline: it gets shriekier with each delivery). Then a motorcycle revs, like a wink and jab at the misogyny of '80s hair metal, and Roan orders, "Get it hot like Papa John!" It's wild how all that artifice is ushering in an age of get-real acceptance. We've come a long way, baby, from the "provocation" of Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl"—which sounds wan more than 15 years later—to Roan singing "Knee deep in the passenger seat and you're eating me out/ Is it casual now?" on the lush power ballad "Casual," about a fuck buddy who won't commit. The album is produced by Dan Nigro, who helped Olivia Rodrigo brilliantly navigate from Disney star to vibrant hitmaker. He and Roan aren't afraid to layer on every accessory—"Guilty Pleasure" pummels with cartoon synth, the crispiest drum-machine beats and yodeling—or to let her inner theater kid turn up the drama to 11. Roan hits wineglass-shattering high notes on "My Kink is Karma," enjoying schadenfreude over an ex's misfortune. Winning "Red Wine Supernova" takes glee in call-and-response gang vocals ("Long hair (no bra!)/ That's my type (that's right!)"), and "Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl" roars like Madonna in her house era, leaning in over and over again to the build-and-drop as Roan blechs out at the chore of tolerating boring dudes: "This man wouldn't dance/ He didn't ask a single question/ And he was wearing these fugly jeans/ Ew!" There are a few Broadway-style ballads ("Coffee," "Kaleidoscope") and one truly unvarnished moment, "California," that seems to reference Roan's early failure before her rebound: "I miss the seasons in Missouri/ My dying town/ Thought I'd be cool in California … But I let you down." It's a sober bookend to "Pink Pony Club," her liberation anthem for kids who dream about escaping small-town, small-minded America for libertine West Hollywood. The best part? That's the song that got Roan dropped from her first record deal. Karma is her kink, after all. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

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The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

Chappell Roan

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Femininomenon Explicit