It’s rare to witness the minting of a new pop star, but in the case of Chappell Roan, there’s striking visual evidence that her career has taken off.
The 26-year-old singer, who released her first album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in September 2023, has been drawing enormous crowds at festivals and concerts over the last few months.
On May 26, the Boston Calling Music Festival attracted tons of attendees with headliners like Ed Sheeran and Megan Thee Stallion, but newcomer Roan stole the show. Drone footage showed a sea of fans gathered to see her perform songs like “Hot To Go” and “Casual” throughout the festival grounds.
By the time June 9 rolled around, Roan kept the momentum going with a performance at New York City’s Governors Ball Music Festival, where she covered herself in green body paint to resemble the Statue of Liberty.
To the gigantic crowd gathered around her, she announced that she declined an offer from the White House to perform at a Pride event.
“We want liberty, freedom and justice for all,” Roan said onstage. “When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.”
Four days before she took the stage at Bonnaroo, the Tennessee festival moved her performance from a tent to a main outdoor stage to accommodate a larger crowd — and it’s a good thing it did. According to the Tennessean, some of Roan’s fans started lining up for her performance at 3:30 a.m. Footage from the June 16 set shows audience members packing the space.
How Roan’s career became ‘Hot To Go’
What sets Roan apart from so many of her peers in the social media and streaming age is that she’s someone who’s as fun to watch as she is to listen to.
Joining Olivia Rodrigo on tour as her opening act in February 2024 seems to have kickstarted Roan’s career. Jason Lipshutz, the executive director of music at Billboard, told Yahoo Entertainment in April that Roan opening for Rodrigo is the “most successful opening act placement in recent memory.”
Roan’s NPR Tiny Desk concert in March contributed to the buzz around her unique performance style, full of outrageous drag costumes and strong vocals, cementing Roan as someone who needs to be seen as well as streamed. A viral Coachella performance boosted her total monthly listeners on Spotify substantially, according to Billboard.
Roan hit the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with her song “Good Luck, Babe!” which was released April 5. The week of June 22, the song reached its current peak at No. 21. Her album, which preceded the single, is currently No. 12 on the Billboard 200 album chart. According to the music data analysis tool Chartmetric, her total monthly listeners have grown from 1.6 million in February when she first opened for Rodrigo to 21.1 million in June following Bonnaroo — that’s an explosive 1,245% increase.
At a June 12 show, Roan admitted to the crowd at a “Midwest Princess” tour stop in Raleigh, N.C., that quickly becoming so successful had her feeling a “little off.”
“I think that my career has just kind of gone really fast, and it’s really hard to keep up,” she said in a speech onstage shared by an attendee on TikTok. “And so I’m just being honest that I’m just having a hard time today.
“This is all I’ve ever wanted, it’s just heavy sometimes, so thank you,” Roan added.
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Though she’s been hustling to break out as an artist for many years, Roan’s rapid rise in 2024 has led some social media users to accuse her of being an “industry plant,” a derogatory term for an artist who becomes popular through wealth and connections rather than talent.
Though it might seem like Roan came out of nowhere, she released her first EP, School Nights, in 2017 when she was a teenager. It didn’t catch on — nor did her 2020 single “Pink Pony Club,” which led her label to drop her. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she moved back in with her parents.
Roan told Paper magazine that when she returned to Los Angeles, she gave herself one year to make music as an independent artist, working at a doughnut shop on the side.
In 2022, she adopted a drag-inspired look. She also released new songs and music videos that referenced her queer identity, funded by herself and her friends.
It worked. She released an album with Island Records in 2023, and as of 2024, she has masses of fans turning up to her shows to celebrate her artistry.
