Chappell Roan is over-the-top. The “Hot To Go” singer who has established a reputation for elaborate costumes and aesthetics inspired by drag queens can often seem like a character from a camp movie. And, as it turns out, there’s a good reason for that.
During a conversation at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles moderated by Brandi Carlile on Thursday night (Nov. 7), Roan talked about making her breakthrough album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and how the woman born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz transformed into megawatt pop star Chappell Roan.
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“Chappell is a character,” Roan, 26, told Carlile, who compared the stage persona to David Bowie‘s Ziggy Stardust. “I just can’t be here all the time. It’s just too much.”
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Roan explained that it took “a lot of years” to convince people that her debut album was worth releasing when she had songs done as early as 2018. Recorded with producer Dan Nigro (Olivia Rodrigo), the LP which has logged 32 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart was released in 2023 after five years of work. “I had no money. I had no numbers backing me up,” she said. “I had an EP [2017’s School Nights] that did not do well by the music standards. I had toured, but no headlines. There was nothing backing me up.”
The star said that one of the early songs she worked on with Nigro, signature banger “Pink Pony Club” — which she performed during her Saturday Night Live musical debut last weekend — was released in April 2020, during the early peak at the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was the worst time for a club anthem to come out,” she said.
It was, however, the track that helped her pull off a “complete 180” from how she dressed and performed at the time, which consisted of wearing “only black on stage. It was very serious.” But, she noted, “the second that I took myself not seriously, is when things started working and that was really scary.”
Roan has been open about how her rocket ride to fame has been disorienting. In addition to recently being being diagnosed with severe depression amid her Midwest Princess tour, she was previously diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. The singer canceled two shows on her tour in September just days before they were set to take place after saying she needed a break after feeling overwhelmed.
Asked by Carlile to describe her mental health routine, Roan took several moments to answer and said it is evolving in the wake of her sudden success this year. “My life is completely different now. Everything is out of whack right now,” she said. “This type of year does something to people. Every big thing that happens in someone’s career happened in five months for me. It’s so crazy that things I never thought would happen happened times 10. I think that that just really rocked my system. I don’t know what a good mental health routine looks like for me right now.”
After Carlile offered to take Roan on a boat ride in Seattle to help with mental health, Roan added, “that when things were more manageable, it was literally taking my meds on time and going to sleep and not doing drugs a lot. It sounds so juvenile, but taking care of myself was a lot easier.”
Roan admits that prior to her fame, part of her self care routine was simply going outside and being with friends. “Going outside is different now,” she laments. “But for someone who doesn’t have to worry about f–king security, going outside and putting your feet in the grass is so settling.”
Roan debuted a new song, the country pop tune “The Giver,” on SNL, just weeks after appearing to tease her next music era in an Instagram post in which she shared selfies and hinted at the follow-up to her debut breakthrough LP. “Album kinda popped off imo but it is time to welcome a hot new bombshell into the villa,” she captioned the pics, in a reference to the Love Island catchphrase welcoming new contestants, which led fans to speculate that she’s working on her second LP. In addition, Nigro has teased that Roan’s next album will be a “new version” of her.