She's gonna keep on dancing at the Pink Pony Club
September 11, 2024 4:49 AM   Subscribe

Chappell Roan is a Pop Supernova. Nothing About It Has Been Easy. (slRollingStone)

Chappell previously

Also if you are not into current pop music, it's cool. Just give this post a pass!
posted by Kitteh (37 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hot To Go was playing at freaking Target yesterday. The phrase 'pink pony club' comes up in conversation more often than 'brat' does. I don't even know what world this is anymore!
posted by mittens at 5:00 AM on September 11 [1 favorite]


My proverbial better half is super into her, so I've gotten to know pretty much all of her videos. And here's the thing: It's surprisingly good pop music. And what a vibe. Just happy and fun.

If you want crunchy, poly tonal underground weirdness, may I recommend J.R.C.G.'s latest album. If you want sweet, playfully transgressive pop joy, though? Chapell Roan's got you covered.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 6:07 AM on September 11 [5 favorites]


“Pink Kitty Club, you're gonna keep on meowing at the Pink Kitty Club, Pink Kitty Club," I sang to my cat this morning.

I am a 44 year old straight man who works for a bank.

She has broad appeal, is what I'm saying.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:18 AM on September 11 [73 favorites]


leotrotsky, uncanny! I was doing the same thing to one of our cats this morning!
posted by Kitteh at 6:24 AM on September 11 [11 favorites]


She is uniformly excellent in all ways, the most impressive pop singer since Lady Gaga.
posted by rhymedirective at 6:29 AM on September 11 [5 favorites]


I got into Chappell Roan because of my gay 14 year old niece and I could not be prouder; my last visit to SC my sister, my niece and I all sang at the top of our lungs to "Pink Pony Club" in the car.
posted by Kitteh at 6:32 AM on September 11 [2 favorites]


57yo straight man: I think she's loads of fun and adore her early-70s Peter Gabriel weirdness: I keep expecting to see her dressed up as a giant flower.

My daughters adore her precisely because she's NOT a pre-moulded Disney pop star: she's from nowhere and for real! (and the older one likes her because she's Super Gay, only Kiddo never actually dates women, only really girly boys, which, you do you) and also because she's not wildly conventionally attractive: this is perceived as a sign of authenticity. I think she's a good songwriter and always appreciate when she comes on the car playlist, which is of course entirely dominated by two squabbling teenagers. I heard for the first time the line about "You'll think I'm a wizard, I've got both a wand and a rabbit" and laughed so hard I almost had to pull over on the highway. Younger daughter did not understand why that was funny, which of course made it even funnier.

Go her, is my point, here.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:41 AM on September 11 [20 favorites]


At Gov Ball, Roan revealed to the audience that she had turned down an invite to the White House’s Pride Celebration. Before singing “My Kink Is Karma,” she dedicated the song to the Biden administration, protesting its involvement in the destruction of Gaza and death of civilian Palestinians. “We want liberty, justice, and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come,” she said.

At her house, Roan tells me she had something “way worse” planned. She was originally going to say yes, show up, and then refuse to perform; instead, she would protest with some poetry. “I had picked out some poems from Palestinian women,” she says. “I was trying to do it as tastefully as I could because all I wanted to do was yell. I had to find something that’s tasteful and to the point and meaningful, and not make it about me and how I feel. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that close in direct sight of the president ever in my life. This is my shot.” She talked it through with her publicist, who was supportive but made a point: “You fuck with the president and the government, your security is not the same, and neither is your family’s.”

Roan opted to turn down the invite, though there were some who misread what she felt was a pretty clear message. “I saw a couple of TikToks where they were like, ‘So she’s pro Trump?’ ” Roan’s face contorts into disgust. “It is not so black and white that you hate one and you like the other. No matter how you say it, people are still going to be pissed for fucking some reason. I’m not going to go to the White House because I am not going to be a monkey for Pride. And thank God I didn’t go because they just made a huge statement about trans kids a couple weeks ago,” she says, referring to the Biden administration stating its opposition to gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors in June. (The administration would walk back those comments a month later.)


This portion is the reason I'm debating if it's worth sharing her article in the ongoing Palestine thread, but I'm happy to see a whole FPP for the interview anyway, which has gone a long way to silence a lot of unnecessary negative standom energy that's come out because of her recent public posts about taking a step back from the limelight because of obnoxious fan interactions (though as the article revealed, that's underselling the examples of sexual assault and outright stalking).

Online pop standom is a mess. Something that should've been fairly sympathetic gets funnelled into an eternal celeb ranking. I've seen someone commented along the lines that so many people clearly needed to be more into sports because being a sports fan would've been more suitable, and I can't unsee it.
posted by cendawanita at 6:56 AM on September 11 [15 favorites]


That was a pretty great article, thanks.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:08 AM on September 11


She’s amazing, and I can’t believe my good fortune in having tickets to her upcoming show in a few weeks - bought before her star rose so meteorically this summer.

“Casual” is my favorite song of hers.
posted by edithkeeler at 7:08 AM on September 11 [5 favorites]


her recent public posts about taking a step back from the limelight because of obnoxious fan interactions

cendawanita, when I got to the part about how a fan found her father's cellphone number (!!) and called him, I gasped. That is very very not cool. (I mean, all of the bad behaviour from her fans is not cool but I can't imagine having some rando call my parent just because I am famous and some rando thinks it's okay to call my parent.)
posted by Kitteh at 7:10 AM on September 11 [3 favorites]


I’m super-late to her fandom - YouTube randomly served up her Tiny Desk concert and I was all “holy shit this drag kabuki queen is what all the kids have been talking about?!?!” - and now there is a background thread constantly running in my head that will not stop being terrified about the 27 club.

I’m glad so many people are reaching out to offer her support. Thanks for posting this.
posted by FallibleHuman at 7:18 AM on September 11 [5 favorites]


...called him, I gasped. That is very very not cool

Yeah, one day there'll probably be a good dissection on what the fuck happened with the culture, but I'll put some money that a dimension to this is the same thing that happened to Taylor Swift when her star became way too big for the "relatable" quality to not become a personal security risk, but a lot of her fan culture is formed around white American straight women norms and that's actually been a buffer for her.

Chappell Roan has the whole 'intimate & relatable but no longer sustainable because the stardom is too high' track too but there's also the (young) queer culture (with the attendant gays v lesbians civil war dynamics) angle too, that gets real combative especially towards their faves as well as possessive as a form of social flex (mistaking parasociality for intimacy, so you see randos taking their shots to put in a read but it's the wrong situation dumbass, now you're just a weird heckler who invited yourself to the brunch table) - I see drag queens coming thru the RPDR factory line having to generationally in real time shift their strategies because in a tighter knit community a rando like that can be heckled right back, but that just opens them up to being "cancelled". But hopefully there's a silver lining to her superfame, in that more normies can form that buffer... But otoh, it's not like you see Beyoncé at the park anymore either.

(There's also the other angle which the RPDR queens and Roan had to face as well, and it's not so much queer culture so much as the online-fostered asian fandom* behaviours that ramped up club behaviours with obsessive knowledge. I really think k-pop fandom and also Chinese media fandom taught western-oriented fandom some genuinely unwell mental models as normal, models which weren't unusual for western nerds but for a long time was well understood to be weird and not to be admitted in mainstream society)

*Yes I was talking about East Asian ones, but until a Western star gets multiple temples consecrated in their honour....

... Anyway, my 2 cents.
posted by cendawanita at 7:31 AM on September 11 [9 favorites]


I was at a Cubs game last weekend and am pleased to announce that "Hot to Go" has joined "YMCA" in the very exclusive club of "Songs by Queer Pop Acts with Alphabetic Hand Motions that are Beloved at Extremely Heteronormative Sporting Venues."
posted by HeroZero at 7:32 AM on September 11 [20 favorites]


I’m not a super fan of her music—it’s good, not my deal mostly—but someone who grew up in the 90s, I think she’s amazing and transformative.

When I was growing up and struggling with my sexuality, I took in a lot of the gay media of the time. What I understood almost explicitly was this: lesbians were studious, lesbians were tough; gay men had fun. Lesbians worked with their hands or with books and politics. Gay men wore drag. There were the Indigo Girls; there was Freddie Mercury. You could be one kind of gay or the other.

Chappell Roan is too young to remember that, so she does as she pleases, and that’s drag; that’s fun.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:39 AM on September 11 [18 favorites]


(Addendum to make it clear: the above dichotomy is bullshit; I was just spelling it out.)
posted by Countess Elena at 7:39 AM on September 11 [4 favorites]


I didn't realize she was diagnosed with Bipolar II. Not the same diagnosis as the one I've had to roll with, but knowing she's struggling with mental health makes me root for her even more.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:58 AM on September 11 [3 favorites]


For people who say that Roan's music isn't their deal, consider checking out "School Nights" is from 2017. It's much closer to the back half of the album that the album with all the big pop bangers are on (which I've been listening to on loop for six months).

"School Nights" is a tightly edited five-track EP full of spare, slow-burners that really highlight her vocal power and a different vibe.
posted by joyceanmachine at 7:59 AM on September 11 [2 favorites]


I went to Pink Pony Club on foot of the Previously. The video started menacing (for me) but finished (for me) hand-clapping delightful. When I was the right demographic, pop fun was defined by The Monkees - we've come a ways.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:39 AM on September 11


I am a 44 year old straight man who works for a bank. She has broad appeal, is what I'm saying.

I'm 53 and (locally) white, cishet, male and I have Femininomenon playing in my head most of my waking hours.
posted by signal at 10:17 AM on September 11 [7 favorites]


This morning my brain is serving me a rotating play list of Pink Pony Club, Casual, and Red Wine Supernova, if that gives you a sense of how much Chappell Roan I've been listening to lately.

Question: how many eps in to the next season of RPDR before she's a guest judge? You know they've already called her!
posted by gingerbeer at 10:25 AM on September 11 [1 favorite]


My husband was humming Hot to Go and he’s not, like, a pop guy.

Queer joy + horny absurdist is just the recipe we need right now

Plus that “don’t think too hard about it” vibe… we are used to reading into Madame Swift’s lyrics and clothes and cryptic messages (and it’s fun no doubt) but for people to ask Chappell hey why did you pick that outfit and for her to say “because I thought I looked hot in it” is just…chefs kiss
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:31 AM on September 11 [6 favorites]


She’s amazing, and I can’t believe my good fortune in having tickets to her upcoming show in a few weeks - bought before her star rose so meteorically this summer.


Rel jel, you MUST report back
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:32 AM on September 11 [1 favorite]


“Pink Kitty Club, you're gonna keep on meowing at the Pink Kitty Club, Pink Kitty Club," I sang to my cat this morning.

This morning when our dog's harness wouldn't fasten without a little adjustment, we sang that she had joined the Fat Puppy Club.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:40 AM on September 11 [8 favorites]


From the article, about being undiagnosed in her youth:

Roan moved back to Missouri and tried to heal. She and her family entered therapy together. “It saved us,” she explains. “I was like, ‘I can’t go my whole life hating my parents for not knowing how to handle a really, really sick child.’ I was just miserable.”

That’s so touching.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:29 AM on September 11 [2 favorites]


Also (posting a lot I know) if you haven’t clicked the article yet, the pictures alone are so stunning and the clothing design is amazing.

Loving the recent set of pop commentary on the blue !
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:44 AM on September 11


I just hope she manages to keep her cool and takes care of her health through all this. Elton John seems like a real stand-up fella, huh?

I like her a lot. I hope and wish she would do more low-fi stuff like the NPR Tiny Desk Concert. These billion-dollar videos and stage spectaculars all start to look and sound the same. I love her DIY vibe when she shows it.

And I wish record companies in general would stop overproducing, compressing, auto-tuning and making pop music all sound so much alike! The contemporary billion dollar production style is what kills so much otherwise good music for me.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:55 AM on September 11 [3 favorites]


I've been evangelizing her for quite a while now, and my middle-aged queer heart explodes every time I see things like... Melissa Etheridge mashing up Chappell. Like, YES.
posted by ApathyGirl at 12:38 PM on September 11 [1 favorite]


50-something cishet dad here who is extremely excited to be taking his teenager to see Chappell Roan in a few weeks. I am not a soft target for pop music in general (my listening habits run towards NIN and Tool) but her music and performance seem so joyful. I can't wait for the energy of the crowd at this show.
posted by griffey at 12:44 PM on September 11 [3 favorites]


I have to say that that is an excellent article on her and I hope she can find the peace she needs.
posted by Art_Pot at 1:04 PM on September 11 [1 favorite]


I was at a Cubs game last weekend and am pleased to announce that "Hot to Go" has joined "YMCA" in the very exclusive club of "Songs by Queer Pop Acts with Alphabetic Hand Motions that are Beloved at Extremely Heteronormative Sporting Venues."

Lifelong baseball fan and player, and while I agree with your basic point, anyone who's huge into baseball and remotely self-aware knows it's by far the gayest of all major sports. "Even as a switch-hitter, Chipper's having trouble connecting with men in scoring position." Most of my large circle of middle-aged gay male acquaintances don't like sports, but every last one of them will go to a Braves game with me because it's so astonishingly gay beneath the apparent heteronormativity. The Braves themselves are super queer-friendly because it's Atlanta, but all the teams and the major fan organizations go all out in June and rainbow up everything and will get right up in your grill if you whine about it.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:35 PM on September 11 [3 favorites]


She's sui generis (at least for this era) in my book, can really sing and is such an absolute contrast to the autotuned to hell mid-talent pop that has me running for the exit. Her videos are fun and creative, the production of the recordings is good and it's nice to live in an era where queer-and-proud music is mainstream. In my lifetime, I can distinctly recall an instance where a radio DJ in a major US city commented how "gross" it was that "when Elton John wrote all his songs he was thinking of men." (Never mind that Bernie Taupin, a straight dude wrote Elton's lyrics.)
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:48 PM on September 11 [3 favorites]


her 2024 vma appearance singing "good luck babe", because who doesn't love sword lesbians?

with this song in particular, i'm amazed to hear reports of it being played at straight weddings, which. oof, there's heteropessimism and then there's heterodespair
posted by i used to be someone else at 8:43 PM on September 11 [9 favorites]


Yeah that VMA performance was definitely worth cancelling a couple of concerts.
posted by zymil at 1:52 AM on September 12


It's worth watching her accept her award too, if only because "Good Luck Babe" was excellent but she looked glum. That was just being in character for the song, though.

Don't worry, our girl was still having a great day. She's so happy while accepting the award.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:46 AM on September 12 [1 favorite]


She seems like a bit of a dork in the VMA speech. I hope she can keep that "i'm human" vibe going, resist all the impulses to file her quirks off to make a perfect public persona.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:49 AM on September 12 [2 favorites]


Super late but joining the party! I have been suggested her videos on YT but didn't watch any until this thread. HOT TO GO playing in my office right now.
posted by Glinn at 7:15 AM on September 12


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