Generally, I am not a pop person. To me, pop is like the cousin or family friend you went on playdates with as a kid that you only see occasionally in adulthood. I was a pop fiend growing up, ritualistically tuning into the Top 40 every weekend from when I was 11 to when I was about 15, silently betting on my favourite songs like racehorses to reach the top of the chart. Around 2014 or so, my interest waned as I heard fewer and fewer songs in the charts that I liked. In my young yet increasingly discerning mind, the quality had nosedived. I ventured elsewhere, into more leftfield alt-pop, then into my best friend’s more rock-based music collection. As I became a cynical, sad teenager, disillusioned with the society I was coming of age in and with a badly bruised heart from a rather toxic first romantic relationship, all I wanted was to hide away and listen to emo.
I’m not sure I was ever made for pop music. The devotion I had for the songs I loved, and my attachment to the artists who made them, was more suited to rock fandoms than to one-off pop hits that could sometimes feel disposable. Rock and metal was a loving, communal home for a girl who always knew she was different but never had the vocabulary for why – with hindsight, and with overdue awareness of my own neurodivergence, I understand why so many other neurodivergent people gravitate towards it, and why a lot of the time it is art for outsiders. I don’t exclusively listen to rock and metal like I used to, but it is still undoubtedly my home turf as music goes.
I drift towards pop in small doses mostly – the occasional song, every so often. I still hold nostalgic affection for the pop of my early adolescence, particularly Lady Gaga. If any pop star raised me, it was her. Sometimes I think about Born This Way and realise that it was maybe not such a surprise I turned out to be the metalhead I did. I’m not oblivious to the workings of modern pop either – I can’t be, working in music media, and it almost feels ignorant when it has become more of a cultural behemoth than I remember it being in years. 2024 will be remembered as an especially potent moment, the age of Brat and ‘Espresso’, and it was through an effort to keep an ear to the zeitgeist that I first hit play on the music of Chappell Roan.
I wanted to know why she had suddenly become so important. What I discovered was, in my opinion, the greatest pop music I had heard in a significant while. With her music’s tinge of ‘80s-style production, it felt like it had been unearthed from a vault, but it already had a sheen of timelessness about it, like it couldn’t necessarily be anchored to a specific time or place. It felt organic in a way that a lot of pop music doesn’t, with its glossy, sometimes artificial-sounding production. Perhaps this is what helped me gel with it better – whatever the genre, overproduction does tend to set my teeth on edge.
I thought I’d just sample the one song, starting with ‘Pink Pony Club’. It’s a beautifully crafted pop song, catchy and vibrant, but underneath its sequins and glitter is a beating heart. Its story, of a girl who runs off to LA to become a go-go dancer, is a compelling narrative of our protagonist sending her love to her parents, conscious of their caution against her career path but knowing in her heart of hearts the Pink Pony Club is where she belongs. At its core is joy and self-acceptance. It’s fun, and yet it’s real. Anyone can endear themselves to that, no matter what their usual sounds of choice are. (Funnily enough, the other modern pop star I’ve enjoyed a lot is Olivia Rodrigo, the rock girl’s pop girl if ever there was one. Maybe if Dan Nigro produces something, that means I’ll like it?)
Already invested, I kept listening. I had to know more about this woman, who could be vivacious and brassy, yet also tender, and with a complete refusal to suffer fools. Despite the slow-burn success of her 2023 debut album The Rise and Fall Of A Midwest Princess, there’s an air of destiny to her music. There's the feeling, upon hitting play, that you're listening to a future classic. It wasn’t meant to only reach a niche sect of fans. In fact, there’s a greater sense of fandom around her that other artists of recent years haven’t built up quite so much. She’s at the nucleus of a community, primarily of girls, gays and theys finding joy in a safe space created all for them.
The joke I make lately is that, in a way, Chappell Roan is punk. It doesn’t come through in her music as so much it does the values she displays outside of her shows. She dedicated her BRIT Award win earlier this year to “trans artists, drag queens, fashion students, sex workers and Sinead O’Connor”. At the Grammys, she demanded labels offer artists better wages and provide them healthcare. In the run-up to the US election, she chose the path of nuance, endorsing neither candidate and called for critical thinking and voting small. She calls the shots and sets boundaries, candid yet steadfast, even when she’s been belittled, treated with disrespect and worn down to a nub. It’s not unfamiliar territory from the messages I hear at hardcore shows. She might create a space to escape from the world’s insidiousness, but at the same time, she stands for something.
Coming up to the weekend of Reading Festival, I was just as excited about her, if not more so, as seeing the far heavier headliner Bring Me The Horizon. Easily, she was the event of the day. You couldn’t move for fluffy pink cowboy hats on that sunny day at Richfield Avenue. I regularly was thrown off seeing people wearing camouflage caps that looked like a hardcore band’s merch, only to squint and see the text on them read ‘MIDWEST PRINCESS’. I, meanwhile, rocked up to the Main Stage come 7pm wearing a Static Dress hoodie. If this makes me the first person to wear Static Dress merch to a Chappell Roan show then that is an honour. (And if you don’t know them – go and hit play on their album Rouge Carpet Disaster when you’ve finished reading this).
Although she hasn’t played an arena in the UK yet, she firmly and truly understood the assignment for headlining a festival here. The stage became a fairytale castle, except she was not – and was never going to be - a meek princess in a tower. Instead, in her extravagant black and purple outfit, she embodied the glamorous Disney villain you secretly root for even when the story’s directing you otherwise. She had Maleficent’s look and Ursula’s spirit, perhaps – fitting, still, given Ursula was inspired by drag culture as much as she is.
On stage, Roan was everything. She was powerful yet also graceful, backed by an all-female band that brought that organic feel of her recorded music to life. With her gritty mid-set cover of Heart’s ‘Barracuda’, she briefly injected a rockier tone into the show that was a pleasant surprise, and a curious twist on what we’d come to expect. Between that and the country twang of ‘The Giver’, she may well be a more fluid artist than she seems on the surface even if she’s stressed her forthcoming music will remain rooted in pop. It was a theatrical, creative display, yet one where the joy and the sense of connection was palpable, most of all when tens of thousands came together to fumble their way through the ‘HOT TO GO’ dance.
The lowlight of the evening was a boy stomping through the crowd on his way out, loudly complaining, “Ugh, she’s so shit.” (She was not). I found myself thinking, She’s not for you. I might not look like the average Chappell Roan fan, but she appeals not as much to the metalhead in me as to the femininity. Empowered, strong yet delicate, and with total disdain for the male gaze, the women and queer people in the crowd can look at her and think, She’s for us. That’s the kind of appeal that can transcend any constructs of genre.
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