Kayleigh Rose Amstutz- known by her stage name, Chappell Roan- was born and raised in Missouri. She expressed a love for music from a young age, learning piano and covering classic Christmas songs for her family. Around her freshman year of high school, she started posting song covers to her YouTube channel and by 17, her original song “Die Young” attracted enough positive attention to get her signed by Atlantic Records. Under this label, Roan toured with Vance Joy and Declan McKenna separately and released an EP called School Nights (2017). In 2020, she released a single titled “Pink Pony Club” and despite Vulture naming it “the Song of Summer 2021” and USA Today ranking it among the “10 best songs of 2020”, Atlantic felt the song wasn’t profitable enough and the label dropped Roan. In 2022, as an independent artist, Roan released “Naked in Manhattan” and “Femininomenon” as the second and third singles for her 2023 debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. She’s since toured with Olivia Rodrigo on both her “SOUR Tour” and “GUTS Tour” and headlined her own “Naked in North America Tour” promoting her album.
Album cover for The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023)
When asked what influences her songwriting, Roan credits 80’s synth pop as her main inspiration. She also mentions Queen, Madonna, Lorde, Stevie Nicks, and Lana Del Rey as musical icons that have shaped her sound and style. On her creative process, Roan explains she's “always on alert”, with her notes app on standby ready to capture any sudden moments of creativity. In this way, she is an avid collector of ideas. Rick Rubin refers to this as the “Seed Phase” in his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being. This phase, according to Rubin, is when creatives are “completely open” and “collecting anything of interest”, which is any potential beginning that could grow into something extraordinary. For Roan, these seeds are concepts, lyrics, melodies, or even emotions that she shelves in her phone and returns to in the studio.
Personality plays an equally important role in her creative process. As mentioned, Roan sometimes collects emotions during her seed phase. In fact, most of her songs begin from a strong emotion she’s experiencing, and the chords and lyrics follow later. Her songwriting, she explains, is very emotionally driven. Roan also describes herself as incredibly introverted, but her stage presence as Chappell is very extroverted, loud, and bold. The dichotomy between her and her character fuels her creativity while writing, as she’s not constrained by the limitations of her own personality. The grandeur of Chappell and her “larger-than-life" persona inspires Roan to write about the life she imagines Chappell leads, even if she’s never experienced those things herself. In a way, her stage personality is her own muse.
In a 2022 interview with Illustrate Magazine, Roan explains that she sees her music as a vehicle for social, cultural, and political progress. A quick listen to anything she’s written will reveal that she doesn’t shy away from queerness or sexuality in her songs. She’s not afraid to be lewd in her music or make her audience uncomfortable if it means erasing the taboo around sexuality and sparking conversations about sex “in a positive, open way”. Chappell is a drag queen that takes the stage in full hair and makeup every night, and on her headline tour last year, she opened each show with local drag performers. A portion of each ticket sold on that tour was also donated to For The Gworls, a New York-based collective that raises money for Black transgender people to have gender affirming surgeries. Roan has made it clear that her work is a social and political statement, and she encourages other artists to create without fear of “ruffl[ing] some feathers”. Her desire for her music to incite change speaks heavily to Roan’s extrinsic motivation as a creative, as she is driven by external cultural change.
Roan for her “Red Wine Supernova” music video (2023)
A couple weeks ago, I saw Chappell Roan open for Olivia Rodrigo on tour, and I had discovered her music online not long before that. In just a few short weeks, her music has become some of my favorite ever. As I blast The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and dance around my apartment with my roommate, I know I am among many people who listen to her and are inspired to unapologetically be themselves. Scheduled to play Lollapalooza this year and gaining traction on social media, Chappell Roan’s dark pop songs and somber ballads are sure to leave a mark on queer culture in the music industry.
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I love Chappell! I did not know that she employs an alter-ego when she performs. I think it is so interesting that she can stretch beyond the limits of her introverted personality in order to loudly bring awareness to the LGBTQ+ population. She is so talented in that respect! She is making queer stories more mainstream and talked about in our society, which is definitely necessary.
ReplyDeleteI've only listened to a couple of her songs, but it was super interesting to learn more about her background and inspirations! She is able to connect her music inspirations in a way that is so unique yet works very well. Also, I found it really interesting that she saw herself on stage as a muse and inspiration, since her stage persona is so different from herself off of stage.
ReplyDelete-Thérèse Giannini
Chappell's music is super cool so I'm glad someone is writing about her. I didn't know about her donations to ForTheGworlz but it doesn't surprise me, she seems like a compassionate and forward-thinking person. I am also not surprised that her music is politically pointed; Rubin had another chapter in The Creative Act talking about how an artist intending on political activism in their art may not inspire the change they intend on, but Chappell puts that theory to rest.
ReplyDeleteI wrote my last post on Olivia Rodrigo so it only felt right to read your post on Chappell this week! I loved learning more about her and am curious to know more about her and Olivia's relationship. I'm so glad you got to showcase her work and her activism, it's awesome that she does that and I think more artists should be more outward about causes they support. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThis was great! Chappell has quickly become one of my favorites. I recently saw a video on Twitter of her "switching from Kayleigh" to "Chappell," so the dual personality point is definitely true. Thank you for sharing more on her creative process!
ReplyDeleteWow super interesting! I just started listening to Chappell Roan and I had no idea she used an alter-ego persona on stage! Reminds me a bit of Nicki Minaj. I think using an alter-ego to "dress up" in a sense allows us to maybe act/perform in a way that isn't typically in our nature. Very interesting concept!
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