By Chris Azzopardi
Photos: Pooneh Ghana for Lollapalooza 2024, Dsusana Risovic for Lollapalooza 2024, Lucienne Nghiem, and Ryan Clemens.
When we connected in late September 2023 from her tour bus, some of Chappell Roan’s first words were, “Hopefully this Zoom works.” You might call that iconic if Roan were the star she is now, when fame turns every sound bite into a viral TikTok. At that moment, Roan wasn’t asking for much — just a stable, uninterrupted connection. Back then, before her single “Good Luck, Babe!” gave her even more lift, she had high hopes for her career but was still focused on the basics. Today, Roan is a chart-topping mega success who may or may not be unintentionally losing wigs on stage, and so her concerns are far grander than ensuring her Zoom is functioning smoothly. Someone else can do that for her! There’s a follow-up album to be recorded!
In the almost 11 months since our interview, Roan’s career has taken off spectacularly, a rare trajectory for any artist. Though it may seem like her rise was swift, 26-year-old Roan has been building her career since before she was a teenage camper at Interlochen in Michigan back in 2014. After possibly making history earlier this month with what may be the “biggest set of all time” at any Lollapalooza festival worldwide with 110,000 concertgoers, according to a festival spokesperson via CNN, it’s hard to believe I saw her perform at a modest club in Detroit, where she played to about 1,000 people at St. Andrew’s Hall last October, a month after releasing “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.” It’s thrilling to see Roan take center stage and inspire many young queer people by showing them what success can look like for a dedicated, young queer woman, particularly one who, as she told me, came from “Trump country.” After all, every future Midwest princess needs her queen.
Truth be told, this interview from just before that Detroit show almost didn’t happen. With a small, niche media team like ours, it’s often a balancing act to manage our workload, and I almost had to let this one slip. But I have Martha Tang (and Lady Gaga) to thank for ensuring it didn’t. Tang, who works for Mighty Real Agency and has previously been a publicist for Gaga, played a crucial role. In 2008, during Gaga’s debut with “The Fame,” when many queer media journalists bypassed the chance to interview her, thinking she’d be a passing trend, Tang persuaded me otherwise. When Roan was about to release her debut, Tang again encouraged me to prioritize this opportunity. She drew a parallel between Roan’s rising star and Gaga’s breakthrough in 2009, noting that many journalists regretted passing on pre-fame Gaga.
Now, in retrospect, my conversation with Roan captures a time when her life was still relatively ordinary — who doesn’t hope for a working Zoom? — and reflects how it has since transformed into something extraordinary, for both her and our community.
How is life on the road?
I am very lucky and love touring. I know a lot of artists really hate it. They think it’s horrible, but I love it. It’s just like now that I’m on a bus, I have nothing. It’s so Gucci and I don’t have anything else that I want right now. It’s so awesome.
You’re just a few dates into the tour. When you look out at the crowd, is it just one big queer party?
Last night I played Salt Lake City. Obviously everyone’s dressed up, there’s drag queens in the crowd. There’s a lot of twinky girlies and there’s the occasional random straight boyfriend standing right front and center, just there for his girlfriend. And it’s every show. Everywhere I play there’s always just one random boy who doesn’t want to be there, but it’s fine. They’re the ones I pick on the whole time. I called some guy out last night and I was like, “What’s your name?” He was like, “Seth,” and I was like, “Are you good at dancing? And he was like, “No.” I was like, “Well, we are about to teach you ‘Hot to Go!’”
He had all those twinks to teach him, right?
Yeah. And I was like, “You better get ready. You fucked with the wrong pop star.”
How did he do?
He was very embarrassed. I could tell he hated it, but I was like, you’re at my show. You’re going to have fun.
I feel like your success has been a long time coming. Label issues, a pandemic. And the album is finally here. What does that feel like?
I feel really at peace, which is something that I didn’t really know I would feel. But I just feel gratitude and peace. I’m very proud of myself, I’m proud of my team, I’m proud of my friends that helped make this, and I’m proud that I kept going through all of the part-time jobs, through being dropped by a label, through all the breakups, through all the times my bank account was nearly empty. I’m very grateful that I kept going, and it feels very good, it feels very right. I’m having a blast on tour, and I think as long as I’m literally putting on shows that make people happy, or playing music that makes people feel seen and heard, I can’t ask for anything else. All my dreams came true. This is it, I don’t need anything else.
When did you first see yourself as a performer?
Well, I opened for Declan McKenna, who’s a U.K. pop rock artist in 2018.
I mean, as a child, did you always envision this for yourself?
No. I mean, when I was little, like 10 and under or a tween, I had it in my head that there’s no way I could ever be this girl. That’s what this project is honoring — that inner child of mine — and proving to her that she deserves to be that version and that she does exist. But when I was on tour with Declan, I was so jealous of them, because they had glitter on their face every night, and they threw balloons in the audiences and they were jumping off amps and speakers and everyone was screaming, and I was like, “Why am I doing this job and that’s not it? There’s no reason to be doing this job if it doesn’t feel like that.” So I just love performing. I feel very myself on stage. I feel like that’s what I was put on this Earth for — to throw fun parties.
You said that you didn’t think that you could have this life, and here you are. What was holding you back? Was it being a queer person in the Midwest that made you feel limited?
I didn’t see myself as queer growing up at all. So that was one thing, one hump I had to go over. The other hump was loving myself, feeling confident in my body and loving my music. All three of those things were non-existent. [A crew member on the bus wakes up as Chappell is talking.] Oh, I’m so sorry. I did not know you were down there. I’m so sorry. I’m doing an interview. Sorry. Someone’s really sleeping in the bunk next to me, I did not know someone was there.
We’ll keep it down.
Anyway. There were so many things that I had to get over that I just deemed impossible for myself, and I think a lot of it came from my community that I grew up in, just not really supporting women in the way that helped women grow out of what served men. I felt that I was only meant to be a mother or a wife and a loyal woman of God, and if I wasn’t those things then I was nothing. So to get over that hump took years, and I did know I was queer, though, since I was in seventh grade.
How did growing up in a small town affect you as a queer person?
There was no queer representation. I didn’t know a single out lesbian girl, gay girl, bi girl, nothing. There were a couple of gay boys in my school who were out and they got terrorized, slurred, threatened. I mean, it was horrible. I saw what would happen if you came out, and I knew that it was a sin at the time, and I think that to grow into the queer girl that I am today, I obviously had to stop dating men who were not it. I had to stop settling for losers and start dating women and getting rid of that shame. I still struggle with it. I have a girlfriend now, and I just struggle with it still, but it’s taken baby steps to get to a confident drag queen version of myself.
Drag culture is a big part of your life and music. When did you find the art form really useful for coming into your authentic self?
I think when I moved to West Hollywood. I had really never even seen a drag queen before. I was 18. It was Disney Princess vibes. When I went to Disney World when I was 7 and I saw Princess Jasmine, it’s no different than me watching a drag show now. I’m in such awe of the makeup, the hair, the outfit, the dancing, the songs. It’s just magical to me, and I just think it’s the funnest thing ever to watch a drag show. It’s all for the fun of it, and I think [my] album is super obnoxious and very tongue-in-cheek, and I think that’s exactly what drag queens do.
Obviously, you love drag queens, you love the art form, but it’s hard to ignore that it could also be kind of a political move by incorporating it into what you do. Is that part of the intent?
I think it’s just a way to not be afraid. Drag queens have always existed and they’re not going anywhere. They’re not unsafe. It’s like, if anything, we need to keep the narrative in our court, in the queer people’s court. The narrative is ours, and so if we stop, then the narrative becomes theirs, and I know it’s very divided right now, but, dude, a lot of things that are everyday acceptable, are like drag. It’s like, stop, don’t tell me that metal bands aren’t drag queens. Do people know when they dress up for football games and paint their faces and do their hair crazy, that’s drag? And yes, I do it to protect my community and literally prove that it’s not dangerous, but also I feel like there’s just a giant misunderstanding. It’s obviously more of an attack on trans people than drag queens. I’m just kind of like, I don’t think you guys know what a drag show is. I bet they would have a lot of fun. I’m just like, you should come!
Are there songs on this album that you can point to where those influences might be especially heavy?
I mean, “Pink Pony Club” and “My Kink Is Karma.” In the music video, I’m literally a drag clown devil situation. I learned how to do drag brows and everything for that. I mean, even in “Casual.”
Who taught you drag brows?
Patrick Starr on YouTube. I think the songs themselves have drag elements, but more so in the visual aspects of how I do my makeup on stage or just “Casual.” There’s this mermaid drag girly who comes out of the water. It’s very campy. I think all the songs are very camp, and I think if you’re taking it seriously, you see it as tasteless, but the reality is that’s just drag; it’s supposed to be tacky.
It explains your appreciation for “Showgirls.”
That is the most insane movie. Every time I watch it, I’m like, what the fuck?
For the album, you also recruited Mike Weiss, who has worked with Charli XCX on some of her biggest gay songs of her career. How did that relationship start?
We were just so stuck on “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl.” It was so frustrating. We just couldn’t get it across the finish line. It was just lacking a lot of depth, and I was just like, “You know what? Who does Charli’s shit?” Because I loved “Yuck” and I loved a lot of stuff on “Crash.” So we asked him, and he pretty much nailed it, first try. I was like damn, he was the key.
When you look at the landscape of pop artists right now, how does it feel to be among those in the pool of queer artists? And what would you like to see when it comes to LGBTQ+ visibility within the pop arena?
To be part of it is much more fun than what I was a part of before, which was this dark alt-pop girl vibe that was really just not fun. Gay clubs are much more fun than street clubs. The thing is, I love seeing other queer artists, of course, and I love talking to them. I feel like there’s a little alliance with all the queer girlies. I was literally talking to Renee Rapp this morning, and then Hayley Kiyoko and I are friends and, obviously, I opened up for Fletcher. There’s a lot of little pop girlies that are friends. I know for my project, I am very adamant about giving back to the queer community, and that is what I encourage other artists to do, whether they’re queer or not: just giving back to the community that supports them so much, whether that be by lowering ticket prices to what they can, or lowering merch prices to what they can, or donating a portion of every ticket or doing charity events.
That’s the most important part, because no one’s going to stand up for queer people. It’s got to be us. We have to support each other. We have to do mutual aid funding and mutual safe spaces, and I try to donate to and a portion of every ticket goes to For The Gworls, which is a grassroots Black trans charity out of New York. I know that there are massive queer charities, but I think it’s just important to fund the little ones as well.
Chris Azzopardi is the Editorial Director of Pride Source Media Group and Q Syndicate, the national LGBTQ+ wire service. He has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ and Billboard. Reach him via Twitter @chrisazzopard