Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, known professionally as Chappell Roan, is an American singer, songwriter and actress, known for Chappell Roan: My Kink is Karma (2022), Moonshot (2022) and Chappell Roan: Red Wine Supernova (Magician’s Cut) (2023). Working with collaborator Dan Nigro, the majority of her music is inspired by 1980s synth-pop and early 2000s pop hits. Her aesthetic is heavily influenced by drag queens, and her music and performing style have been described as “campy“.
In 2015, when she was 17, Roan uploaded an original song, “Die Young”, to YouTube. She was signed to Atlantic Records shortly thereafter. In 2017, she released her debut EP, School Nights. Her 2020 single “Pink Pony Club” was a stylistic departure from her early releases and facilitated Roan’s initial rise to prominence. She was dropped from Atlantic Records that same year.
Following a short break, she released a series of songs independently in 2022. Her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, was released through Island Records in 2023 and was included in several best albums of 2023 year-end lists. Although not an immediate commercial success, the album garnered a cult following by early 2024, being regarded as a “sleeper hit“. The album’s commercial breakthrough was largely influenced by Roan’s stint as a supporting act on Olivia Rodrigo‘s Guts World Tour, her performances at music festivals including Coachella and Governors Ball, and the success of her follow-up single, “Good Luck, Babe!“. By mid-2024, the album had climbed worldwide charts considerably, peaking at number one in Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK, and within the top five on the U.S. Billboard 200 and Australia. Subsequently, several of its singles entered various charts for the first time since their release.
Years active: 2014–present
Born Age: February 19, 1998, 26 years old and 9 months, Willard, Missouri, USA
Sun Sign: Pisces
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Brown
Height: 5’2″ – 1.57 m
Measurements: 33-23-34 in – 84-58-88 cm
Bra size: 32B US – 70B EU
Genres: Pop, synth-pop
songer Chappell Roan
Chappell Roan Is a Joan of Arc on the 2024 VMAs Red Carpet
Chappell Roan Is a Joan of Arc on the 2024 VMAs Red Carpet
Early life
Relative: Darin Chappell (uncle)
Kayleigh Rose Amstutz mother, Kara (née Chappell) Amstutz, is a veterinarian; and her father, Dwight Amstutz, manages a family practice in Springfield and is a registered nurse in neurological and burn intensive care units. Her uncle is Missouri State Representative Darin Chappell. She has described her hometown and her upbringing as conservative and Christian. During her childhood, she attended church three times a week and spent some summers at Christian camps. In a 2023 Variety interview, she said that she struggled with her upbringing and snuck out often: “I just wanted to feel like a good person, but I had this part of me that wanted to escape so bad.”
Roan began playing the piano when she was 10 or 11 years old and began taking lessons at the age of 12. She performed publicly for the first time at age 13, singing “The Christmas Song” at her school’s talent show, which she won. When she was about 14 years old, she auditioned for America’s Got Talent without success. At 14 or 15 years old, she began uploading covers to YouTube, drawing attention from various record labels. She began songwriting as she entered her teen years. She graduated a year early from Willard High School. Roan described missing many childhood experiences in the “messy” beginning of her music career, including her prom and high school graduation.
Career
2015–2021: Career beginnings
In November 2014, Roan uploaded her original song “Die Young” to YouTube under the name Kayleigh Rose. She wrote the song while attending summer camp at Interlochen Center for the Arts, which she said “changed [her] trajectory forever”. She subsequently traveled to New York for several musical showcases, leading to her signing with music label Atlantic Records in May 2015. In 2016, she adopted the stage name Chappell Roan in honor of her grandfather Dennis K. Chappell, who died of brain cancer that same year. The name is a combination of her grandfather’s last name and a word taken from his favorite song, “The Strawberry Roan” by Curley Fletcher. She has also expressed dislike for her birth name.
On August 3, 2017, Roan released her first single, “Good Hurt”. The song was reviewed favorably in Interview, which praised her “striking maturity and surprisingly deep vocals”. On September 22, 2017, she released an EP titled School Nights through Atlantic Records. Also in 2017, she supported Vance Joy on his Lay It On Me Tour. During this time, Roan lived with her parents in Springfield, Missouri, flying with them to Los Angeles or New York City when necessary. In 2018, Roan moved to Los Angeles. She has since stated this was the first time she felt able to live openly as a queer woman, as well as feeling “overwhelmed with complete love and acceptance”, allowing her to begin “writing songs as the real [her]”. From January to March 2018, she toured the United States with Declan McKenna.
Roan began working with songwriter and producer Dan Nigro in late 2018. In April 2020, Roan released “Pink Pony Club“, which she has described as a “hard left turn” from School Nights. The single was produced by Nigro, and its music video was directed by Griffin Stoddard. Roan has cited a visit to The Abbey, a gay bar in West Hollywood, as the inspiration for the song. She said the song expressed her desire to become a go-go dancer in Los Angeles, stating, “truthfully, I’m not confident enough to do that, so I wrote a song about it.”
Roan released two more singles, “Love Me Anyway” and “California”, in May 2020. However, her releases were not profitable enough for Atlantic, who dropped Roan from the label in August 2020. Her boyfriend of four years broke up with her the same week, and she spent the next two years working as a production assistant as well as a barista and nanny to support herself. Despite this, USA Today ranked “Pink Pony Club” third on a list of the “10 best songs of 2020”; an accompanying description characterized it as dance-pop that “earnestly [celebrates] queer culture, acceptance and chasing your dreams”. A year after its release, Vulture described “Pink Pony Club” as “the Song of Summer 2021”, calling it a “synthy infectious bangarang”. By August 2022, the song had been streamed more than 10 million times on Spotify.
In early 2021, the success of Olivia Rodrigo‘s “Drivers License” shifted Nigro’s focus from Roan as he worked on Sour with Rodrigo; Roan was unable to find a collaborator whom she liked as much. She briefly moved back to Missouri to work on her music independently while working in a drive-through.
2022–2023: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess
Roan moved back to Los Angeles in October 2020 to continue working on her music independently while working a series of odd jobs, including as a production assistant and in a donut shop. She then earned a publishing deal with Sony, and by February 2022, was able to work with Nigro again to create and release “Naked in Manhattan”. The song was her first release in two years, her first as an independent artist, and her first to express same-gender attraction. It was described by NPR as a “queer girl bop” with lyrics that are “tender, nostalgic” and “flirty yet uncertain”. Roan also was selected as the opening act for Olivia Rodrigo for performances on Rodrigo’s Sour Tour and for Fletcher on her Girl of My Dreams Tour.
In August 2022, she released a third independent single, “Femininomenon“. Earmilk described the song as “so fun and loud but so intricate” and noted it was different from Roan’s past releases. Roan stated that the song, which was produced by Nigro, was an attempt to “get away with being as ridiculous as I possibly can”. An accompanying self-directed music video featured Roan riding a dirt bike. Roan released another single, “Casual“, which she had begun working on with Nigro in 2020. The song, produced by Nigro, criticizes a romantic partner who refuses to commit and was inspired by Roan’s brief relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic that ended with her partner saying they had met someone else.
In February 2023, Roan embarked on the Naked in North America Tour, her debut headlining tour. Each stop on the tour had a theme, with Roan suggesting outfits for fans while making her own camp costumes herself. Inspired by Orville Peck, Roan chose to book drag queens as openers for the tour. Concerts from the tour received positive reviews in The Harvard Crimson and Variety, with Jem Aswad describing it as a concert where “you recognize when a new-ish artist’s career is about to blast off” similar to Lorde in 2013 and Billie Eilish in 2019. In March 2023, Roan released “Casual“, followed later that year by the release of subsequent singles “Kaleidoscope”, “Red Wine Supernova” and “Hot to Go!“.
On September 22, 2023, Roan released her debut full-length album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and began her second headlining tour, the Midwest Princess Tour. The tour, ending in the spring of 2024, traveled across North America and had shows in London, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, and Amsterdam. Roan donated $1 per ticket sold to the nonprofit For the Gworls and opened each show with drag performers. The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess was included in several best-albums-of-2023 year-end lists, ranking notably in those by The A.V. Club, Time, Nylon, Dork, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Vogue. It was also listed as one of Pitchfork‘s 22 Best Pop Albums of 2023 and was named Pop Buzz’s Number One Album of 2023.
2024–present: Career breakthrough
Roan opened for Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour in the United States and Canada from February to April 2024. In Roan’s first week of the tour, her streams rose by 32 percent. Also in February, Roan was a musical guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In March, NPR Music released Roan’s Tiny Desk Concert performance.
In April 2024, Roan released the single “Good Luck, Babe!“, describing it as “the first song of the next chapter”. The song speaks about compulsory heterosexuality, describing a woman trying to deny her romantic feelings for Roan and women in general. Praised by Billboard as a “well-deserved breakthrough”, the song received 7 million streams in its first week, was listed in the Spotify top ten, and debuted at number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was Roan’s fastest to hit 100 million streams on the platform. By June, the song became her first top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and by August, it reached a peak of number six, becoming her first top ten song on the chart. Although not included on her debut album, the single’s success was a catalyst for propelling it to worldwide recognition. In June 2024, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess entered the top ten on the Billboard 200 for the first time, with over 40,000 equivalent album units sold. By August, the album had reached number two.
In April, Roan performed at Coachella. At this time, Roan saw growing success on Spotify, with her monthly listeners increasing more than 500% from February to April. As reported by Billboard, by June 2024, Roan’s weekly streams had grown by more than twenty-fold from the start of the year. That same month, Roan revealed she had declined an invitation from the White House to perform for that year’s Pride celebration. During the Governors Ball Music Festival, Roan stated “we want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come”, citing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and transgender rights. That same month, Roan debuted an unreleased song titled “Subway” as part of her performance at the Governors Ball Music Festival, continuing to work towards a new album. At a concert in June, Roan spoke to the crowd about dealing with her rapid increase in popularity, stating “I think my career is just kind of going really fast and it’s really hard to keep up. I’m just being honest, I’m having a hard time today. […] This is all I’ve ever wanted—it’s just heavy sometimes.” Following her performance at Lollapalooza in August, she drew the biggest daytime set and largest crowds ever seen at the festival.
In September, Roan performed at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards and won Best New Artist. She dedicated the trophy to queer and trans people. In October, she reached number 1 for the first time on the Billboard Artist 100, coinciding with the biggest sales week ever of her debut album.
Artistry
Chappell Roan writes most of her songs with co-writers, most prominently her producer, Nigro, with her song “Kaleidoscope” being the only song from her debut album written solely by Roan herself. After the release of her debut single “Good Hurt”, her style was described in Interview as “pop sound […] infused with a dark and unsettling tone that underscores her intense, somber lyrics.” In 2018, she described her musical style as a mix of organic and electronic sounds, with a pop tone, and as “dark pop with ballad undertones”. In her songs written while she was a teenager, according to Atwood Magazine, she “brought the hardship and turbulence of our teenaged years to life with a candidness and vividness seldom seen from her peers.” Roan describes her music as “kind of the fairytale version of what happened in real life” as her persona is a larger-than-life version of her real self. Roan has been described as having a soprano vocal range.
Inspiration
Roan has cited Kate Bush as a prominent influence. She has also cited inspirations including the artist Abbey Watkins, the film The Beguiled, and musical artists alt-J, Stevie Nicks, Ellie Goulding, Lorde, and Lana Del Rey. In 2023, on an exclusive interview for Pop Crave, Roan stated that she listened to Lorde, Del Rey and Goulding throughout her entire high school years. She has stated that the song “Stay” by Rihanna inspired her to begin writing music. In 2023, a Variety article described Roan as “glammy and pop and embracing her femininity and shared Gen-Z generational experiences, and also very queer-positive.” Roan has also cited Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj as inspiration for her attitude towards making people feel confident with her music. Roan spoke in admiration of Ariana Grande, calling herself “an Arianator”. Discovering artists like Katy Perry, Kesha, Britney Spears, and Pink during her adolescence also influenced her to start writing music and construct her onstage persona. Roan stated she was raised on Christian rock during her childhood but never identified with it, instead having a curiosity about pop music.
Roan’s makeup and hair is primarily inspired by drag makeup, including queens like Violet Chachki. Roan’s makeup also takes inspiration from Boy George, 1980s punk, and Vivienne Westwood. Roan described her makeup looks for the Coachella festival as “Paris Hilton and James St. James or Walt Cassidy became one and put on a drag show.” Roan is also heavily inspired by the Club Kids scene. While on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Roan stated her stage looks reference horror movies, burlesque, and theater. Roan also described her outlook for her on-stage costumes, “I love looking pretty and scary. Or, like, pretty and tacky. Or just not pretty. I love that too. I just think it’s just not serious, I love that fans find such deep meanings to things and I’m just like, ‘I don’t know, I thought I looked hot.’ Like, I don’t know if it’s anything more than that.” Roan considers herself a drag queen with her own persona, stating, “I’ve never fully understood why women shouldn’t be allowed to do drag because – yes, I do drag! […] It feels like they don’t like women doing certain things. Another man trying to tell a woman what to do. Just try telling me what to do! I’m a drag queen – whether you like it when women do it or not.”
Cultural impact
Roan’s success has led her to be called a “queer pop icon”, “a superstar in the making”, and a “visionary performer”. Roan has been credited with leading a “lesbian pop renaissance” on the music charts and within the cultural zeitgeist. Roan’s music brought the concept of compulsory heterosexuality into the forefront of mainstream pop music. She has been praised for her “unapologetic authenticity” and “expression of her queerness and femininity” in her music and live performances, inspiring young women to embrace their own sexuality. She has also been applauded for her image “rejecting the male gaze” within the pop landscape. Roan has been praised for her “punkish” attitude towards the status quo for queer performers and applauded for “rewriting the rules of lovelorn pop”. Rolling Stone described watching Roan’s performances as “like watching Michelangelo craft the statue of David in real time”.
In 2024, Roan gave a guest lecture at the Harvard Medical School. When searching for Roan’s name on Google, users are prompted with “Did you mean: your favorite artist’s favorite artist”, which references a viral clip of Roan introducing herself on stage at the Coachella Music Festival. This was inspired by Roan’s favorite drag performer Sasha Colby. Roan joked the search term was caused by a “random twink who works at Google” and stated that she modified Colby’s phrase as she hoped Colby would one day watch and recognize her.
In August 2024, the Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign released a baseball cap with the words “Harris Walz” in a similar style to Roan’s “Midwest Princess” merchandise baseball cap designed by creative director Ramisha Sattar. In response, Roan tweeted “is this real”.
Personal life
Roan currently lives in Los Angeles, California. While she was raised Christian, she has said that she no longer identifies with the church and that her current relationship with religion is “evolving”. Roan has dated men in the past; however, she stated that she no longer dates men and identifies as a lesbian. As of September 2024, Roan is in a relationship with a woman who she describes as “completely outside the industry.”
Roan was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder when she was 22 years old, a disorder which contributed to her difficult childhood. She has described therapy and medication as being helpful for her. She said that she came to her “tacky pop star” appearance after discussing her inner child with her therapist.
While it began as a stage name, Roan has called Chappell Roan her drag persona and likened herself to Hannah Montana. She describes Chappell Roan as more open and confident, especially regarding sex, than her real self.
Following her rapid commercial breakthrough, Roan spoke frequently of the pressures of her newfound fame and condemned behavior from some fans that she considered “creepy” and “invasive”. In multiple social media posts, Roan expressed feeling unsafe as a result of public harassment and stalking from fans, which included attempts to contact members of her family. These statements were satirized by a Saturday Night Live sketch by Bowen Yang which compared her situation to that of the viral zoo animal Moo Deng.
Facts
Chappell Roan choose the stage name “Chappell Roan” to honor her grandfather, Dennis K. Chappell, who was a major influence on her music career.
Chappell Roan Awards and Nominations.
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