Listen, I’m almost 32 years old. I don’t really listen to new music anymore. I know what I like and what I want to listen to, and that’s that. My Spotify Wrapped every year was entirely one musical theatre playlist (more than once, my top artist was Idina Menzel). I basically… forgot to listen to music. Then something changed. A rogue TikTok began circulating among queer folks about how this song “Hot to Go!” by Chappell Roan is the gay “YMCA”, which is certainly A Statement To Make. And suddenly, “Hot to Go!” was everywhere; every other video on my FYP was people doing H-O-T-T-O-G-O, and I was immediately hooked. I literally put it on repeat in my office for an entire day, trying to learn the lyrics. I have barely listened to anything else since.
In reality, 2024 was a fantastic year for new music across genres. Even if I did not buy into Brat Summer as hard as everyone else (genuinely, I was just listening to Chappell instead), I did spend a lot of time listening to the new Beyoncé album and becoming obsessed with Doechii’s insanely precise stage performances. But Chappell has not left my brain. It has wormed itself into my every thought and will hold on forever, I think. As I began diving deeper into her music, I realized Chappell’s music was so genuinely relatable to much of my own experience as a queer person. So many of the lines in her songs speak so deeply to me. And Chappell’s performances this past year have been nothing short of spectacular. This drag persona she has created, with pale white face and bright blue eye shadow, draggy costumes, over-the-top wigs, and important cultural references, has cemented her place among the top echelon of drag performers.
Musically, Chappell Roan is one of the greatest voices we have heard. Her musicality and vocal talent, used in virtuosic, full effect across her album and her follow-up single “Good Luck, Babe!” are at a level above even some of the most proficient vocalists in popular music today. The slide she does from the end of “oh mama” to “I’m just having fun” in “Pink Pony Club” sends me to a new level. The falsetto on “Naked in Manhattan” and the fierce, full vocalization of “When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night” on “Good Luck, Babe!”… Chappell will always be remembered for her pure, raw talent as a vocalist.
Chappell has talked at length about how coming to terms with her queerness is one of the main themes in The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, but I think it goes beyond that. I think queerness is what makes this album so perfect. Queerness is the lifeblood that weaves its way through all of her songs. “Naked in Manhattan”’s chorus says “Touch me baby, put your lips on mine/Could go to hell, but we’ll probably be fine”. By “After Midnight” she’s kissing your boyfriend and your girlfriend, and by “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl”, “He doesn’t have what it takes to be with a girl like me”. And by her post-album release, “Good Luck, Babe!”, she’s fully bloomed into her queerness (“You can kiss a hundred boys in bars/Shoot another shot, try to stop the feeling/You can say it’s just the way you are/Make a new excuse, another stupid reason”). Her dedication to her queer community isn’t just in her music but in her activism as a human being, as well. This truthful application of a queer lens to her music is rooted in a lived experience both as an individual and as a community member that only strengthens the art she makes.
There is a distinct joy in listening to Chappell Roan’s music. In a debut album that feels like it could be her greatest hits, every song is a party, but every line hits with a poetic musicality that can’t be learned. There is no denying Chappell is a superstar, and each Grammy nomination she has garnered is a reward for her dedication to her truth. Without a doubt, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is my album of the year. And even if she doesn’t walk home with a trophy this year, she has already won and will continue to thrive. As she says in “Pink Pony Club”: “Oh mama, I’m just having fun/ On the stage in my heels/It’s where I belong down at the/Pink Pony Club.”
Long live Chappell Roan!
