Switched on Pop - Why Chappell Roan is the sound of 2024

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

For months, listeners have been peppering us with the same question: “When are you going to cover Chappell Roan?” We genuflect, then respond, “We interviewed her back in 2023!" The people don’t care. They want breakdowns of Chappell Roan’s musical wizardry, and who are we to deny them? After all, Chappell is having a moment, with five songs on the Billboard Hot 100, iconic performances on the biggest stages, and an average of seventy million streams a week. Everyone from the mailman to your grandma is dancing along to her buoyant choreography and undeniable melodies—but why? What are the musical devices Chappell and producer Dan Nigro are using to craft her ubiquitous sound? And why are her empowered, defiant lyrics resonating with audiences at this particular moment in history, when queer and trans rights are under attack? In this episode, Nate and Charlie visit the Pink Pony Club to get some much-needed answers. Songs Discussed Chappell Roan - Good Luck, Babe!, HOT TO GO!, Red Wine Supernova, Pink Pony Club, Hurt Toni Basil - Mickey Devo - Whip It Starship - We Built This City More Read Constance Grady's Vox article, Chappell Roan spent 7 years becoming an overnight success Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, every day we get the same message in our emails, in our Instagram DMs. Literally people accosting me on the street. And you know what they're all saying. Give me $5?

When are you going to cover Chapel Rhone? But we did cover Chapel Rhone. back in December. We spoke with her. Well, Charlie, this is often my response as well. Caste back to December 2023 when we had the one and only chapel ron on this very program in a candid conversation. You famously described her sound as slumber party pop. Did I? I don't remember that.

And yet, this does not satisfy the people this response, Charlie. Yeah. Because we are living in a different world than December 2023. Back then, Chapel Rhone was averaging two to three million streams per week. Nice. Now, summer 2024, we're talking 68 million streams per week. Well, almost as much as this podcast. She has blown up, Charlie.

Yeah. She is the moment. Yeah, she's having such a big moment that she has recently communicated that her rise to fame is going so fast that she needs to slow it down because it's getting creepy. Yes. So it is incumbent for us to return to this artist. and give her the full deep dive into her sound that she deserves and that the people are demanding, Charlie. Okay.

So Chapel Roan, who, where, when, why, what's going on? Though she's seen a sort of meteoric rise in the past six months, this artist is not an overnight success story. She's been on the come-up since she signed a deal with Atlantic Records when she was only 17, then moved from small-town Missouri to Los Angeles. then got dropped from her label, went home to Missouri, reinvented herself, returned to L.A., and took the world by storm

with her slow-burning album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess. She's got incredible style inspired by drag queens. She's got choreographed dance moves to her songs, but more than anything, she has bops. So this will change by the time this episode drops. But at the time of this recording, She has five songs on the Billboard Hot 100.

Oh. And I want to go through four of them and try and understand why Chapel Rhone is the sound of 2024. Okay. Where do we start? We start with the highest charting of these songs, Charlie. It's Good Luck, Babe. Written by friend of the show, Justin Tranter, alongside Daniel Nigro, and Kaylee Rose, Amstets, who is Chapel Rowan's real name. This is not only the most popular of Chapel songs right now,

I think it's also a great place to start to try and understand why she has captured our collective imagination. And just starting with this chorus and this title, Good luck, babe. It's kind of ironic and detached, but then it's also sung with so much passion and commitment, How do we get here? We got to go back to the beginning of this track.

Okay. Let's set this scene. It's fine. It's cool. You can say that we are nothing but you know the truth. And guess I'm the fool with her arms out like an angel through the car sun roof. It's very majestic. Here's reason number one that Chapel Rhone is the sound of 2024. for it's these lyrics at the very start of good luck babe these are so hyper specific imagistic like you said

and yet they also roll off the tongue so effortlessly they're so perfectly matched to the melody they sound like normal speech in a way so there's this combination of being these perfectly chiseled diamond-like turns of phrase that get etched into your memory banks and yet they sound so casual almost, to borrow the name of another Chapel Rhone song. It's fine. It's cool. And it's also setting up a dynamic that we are going to hear throughout Chapel Rhone's discography, which is this tension between her desire and the object of her affection kind of looking somewhere else. There's this star-crossed quality to a lot of these songs that you can hear just at the very started this, right? These two people, Chapel Roan and her lover are like not in the same place.

Yeah. And this tension just increases, just ratchets up as we get to the pre-chorus. I don't want to call it off, but you don't want to call it love. An incredible pairing where there's so much tension between two people. I love how short this pre-chorus is, Charlie. It's only four measures. It goes by so fast, but it does its job because at the very end, you get this tension that you were just describing. Then Chapel Rhone sails up her vocal register to hit this chorus. And there's reason number two why Chapel Rhone is the sound of 2024. It's the vocal performance that we're hearing in this chorus. By the time we get to this title line, good luck, babe.

We've actually ascended a full octave up from where we started. That very first line, it's fine, it's cool. That was down at F and D in the bottom of her range. Now we're at F&D, a full octave up. This is not easy to do. And it sounds so crystalline clear when she sings it. It's a real send-off, right? It's like, good luck, babe.

If you think you can quit this relationship, ha, I laugh at you. I'm hanging out here in the upper octave of my voice without a care in the world. You go and find this happiness. You think you can. The performance obviously here also mirrors the directionality of the music.

I love that when at the start, she says, it's fine, it's cool, whatever. The music is so simple, right? Very basic indie, groove, nice little synth keys. I've actually tried to recreate this song. And I can't do it because the sounds are so, it's so simple, but they're so perfect. Yeah.

And just gradually, moment by moment, they're growing and building. And she's slowly going up her range to this point of, before you know it, the whole thing feels like it's this orchestrated symphony. Yeah. I love that you pointed that out, Charlie, because... I do think as we listen to these songs, this figure of Dan Nigro in the background is so important. And he's almost masterful at not drawing attention to himself.

There aren't a lot of musical choices that make you go, oh, wow, what was that sound? It's so subtle and effective because it's just perfectly supporting the message of the song. And I think this is reason number three for chapter Roan's success. It's the immaculate, perfect production by Dan Nigro. Check out how the voices overlap on this chorus, Charlie. It's like, as soon as Chaparone finishes singing, Good Luck, Babe, another Chaparone pops up and sings, good luck, babe.

They're overlapping in this way. There's her voice layering on top, one after the other, with the symphony orchestra building behind her, supporting it. And like you said, Charles, it's almost like that symphony has come out of nowhere. Yeah. So organically. You only really notice it when it drops out in the second verse. You're like, whoa. There's this immense difference from where we've begun. There's a lot of care and craft that goes into these songs.

And a really sterling example in Good Luck, Babe, comes when we get to the bridge. Reason number four, Chapel Rhone is the sound of 2024. This artist knows how to write a bridge. This bridge, like the whole song, is exemplifying the distance in the relationship where the narrator is infatuated and the other person is not. And so you have these two different energies, one where it's fine, it's cool, kind of like even like the second half of the bridge here too where it kind of like chills out. And then you have the like really heated emotional thing happening at the same time. This bridge is like a cresting wave that you just get caught up in. And then crashes.

That's right. And when it crashes, all those beautiful symphonic strings just get replaced with, like, panting. Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha. It's like, it's so primal in a way. There's, like, so much delicacy and sophistication here. And then it's also so kind of naked and raw. And I feel like that brings us to our final reason. Reason number five, if you're counting at home,

why Chapel Rhone is the sound of the moment. her narratives of queer desire and sexual awakening. They are so palpable, Charlie. They're so numerous. You can kiss a hundred boys in bars. This is a, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, right. You have to read between the line for when you do, you realize this is a narrative about queer desire. Chapel Rhone is trying to tell someone that they can't deny their feelings for her, even if they think they're, uh, attracted to a member of,

of the opposite sex. And there's something transgressive and radical about hearing that in a pop song. Yeah. Okay, so we've got five reasons. Number one, lyrics of assassin-like precision in their turns of phrase. Two, production that perfectly supports the song's message.

Three, vocal performances of superb quality and impressive range. Four, bridges that just don't quit. and five narratives of queer desire and sexual discovery. All right? Got it. Let's see these play out in three other songs that are currently on the Billboard Hot 100. All right.

Next up is H-O-T-T-O-G-O. H-O-T-O-G-O. Five, six. All right, so once again, at the very start of this song, we have a line that is just cut from marble. I could be the one or your new addiction. It's all in my head, but I want nonfiction. I mean, it's so clever.

But also doesn't even call attention to it itself. Like, we're just on to the next, you know? It's like, it's why these songs reward, repeat listenings because there's a lot of lyrical density here. I'll just want to add in here that this is a very, nostalgic song to me. Like, peak 80s synth pop kind of vibe. Indeed.

Sort of Devo-esque. And then you have the sort of chanting quality that reminds me of a song like, Hey Mickey. Hell yeah. That's one of Chappell's things. Like, there's a lot of spoken, sort of chanted material.

So it feels musically comfortable, nostalgic of the past, but with her unique pen. The harmony here is like nefariously simple. Just two chords oscillating back and forth. The one and the four, the tonic and the subdominant,

and we just go back and forth. It kind of gives you that nostalgic simplicity that you crave, Charlie. Might I even throw out there? We built this city by Starship. Am I crazy? I take this city, we built the city? No, you're not, Charlie. You have successfully identified two songs that both use the word.

city. Bravo. They said it couldn't be done. And here you are out there proving them wrong. Oh, good. Oh, God. Let's continue with the song. We haven't even gotten to the freaking chorus of Hot to Go. H-O-T-O-G-O.

This is one of those lines you hear one time, and you remember till you're dying day. You'll be like calling your grandchildren to your side on your death. bed and saying lean closer and they'll be like what what is it you'll be like just remember h o t o g oh so i have no profound reading of these lyrics charlie i think that's exactly not the point but it does bring us to one of these other reasons right for chapel row and being the sound of 2024 and a certain kind of continuity that is being created through these songs because these lyrics are continuing this theme of one-sided affection of yearning unrequited, of explicit sexuality. It is so relatable and yet so fun at the same time.

But aren't you at all concerned about the fact that it feels like it's 190 degrees? This song is unsafe. This is far too hot. That's okay, Charlie. You can wear your oven mitts when you listen to this, okay? You'll be okay. Okay, okay. And I feel like this playbook works so well because it's kind of this universal experience of like wanting someone so badly that you're like burning up.

But it's delivered in this way that is kind of fun and cheeky and empowering at the same time. Hurry up. It's getting cold. Hurry up. It's time for supper. Order her up. I'm hot to go. If this song were not great, it would be a jingle for a fast food restaurant.

That's a bleak idea, Charlie. If Papa Johns actually uses this for a jingle, I don't want to live in that world. But you have drawn attention to another one of our reasons for Chapel Rome being the sound of the moment, right? Another impeccable bridge. Yep. And another kind of gobsmacking vocal performance. How will these themes be continued on the next two songs we're going to listen to? to, stick around after a brief break to find out.

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Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time.

The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. All right, Charlie, we've made it to Red Wine Supernova. Best title of a song ever? Yes, Charlie, the song titles across this album are works of art unto themselves. Feminine nominon, red wine, supernova, super graphic, ultra modern girl. There's such a specificity to these songs that is like immediately apprehensible

and really draws you into their world. Another thing that draws you into the world of this song is the way that everything drops out for the chorus. What at one point in time, Charlie, we might have even called an anti-chorus, at least until Chapel Roan says, let's pick it up now and the beat comes right back in. It's a moment that accentuates this theme of yearning desire

that I think we've noticed throughout these songs, because it finds Chapel kind of alone with her desire. And then just when things could get kind of too bleak and lacrimos, the beat comes back in, and it's that balance of triumph and trial that is like always animating these songs. I think the power of this chorus is also intensified by some very deliberate rhyme schemes in the verse.

Like if we go back to the pre-chorus, Here's the first line we hear. In the hallway waiting for you. Let's skip ahead a little bit. I just want to get to know you. We're still building up to the chorus here, Charlie. And when we do, in the hallway, waiting for you, I just want to get to know you. Baby, why don't you come over?

Red wine supernova. She's been laying the groundwork for this chorus before we even realized it was coming, like a jet plane taking off. It's like the anticipation of, I want you to come over, waiting in the hallway. All this anticipation is fulfilled when the chorus arrives. We have this great line about the red wine supernova blush in the face, allusion to the song Champaign Supernova by Oasis. And it is all fulfilled.

Except is it, Charlie, I feel like that's the puzzle of this song. Is this fulfillment or is it a dream of fulfillment? will we get our answer in another iconic chapel rhone bridge? Let's find out. I don't think that's a typical magic wand that she's talking about. Let's get freaky, get kinky, let's make this bed get squeaky. I mean, chef's kiss to that rhyme. I don't know, Charlie.

I feel like this song is pleading for someone to come over, and we never know if they actually do, which is so perfectly chapel rome. own because there's, again, that sense of like just kind of simmering, burning desire. I feel like this uncertainty is even emphasized in the chorus where our narrator is swooning, feeling this overwhelming feeling of this red wine supernova, while the other person happens to be a stoner. And so you have this contrast of what substance are you into and suggest this sort of this little bit of a disconnect between these two people. Yeah, kind of like,

you drink tea, I drink coffee. This is true. It's the source of our power. Charles, take a trip with me to the Pink Pony Club, our final Chapel Rhone song of the moment. Not to say there aren't many more we could discuss in depth, but I think this is a powerful one to end on

because in many ways this is the origin story of this artist. Pink Pony Club, Let's go to the chorus. A little backstory about this song. This was actually the first collaboration between Chapel Rhone and Dan Nigro. Way back in 2020. So that gives us some perspective on how this whole album

and Good Luck, Babe, which was not part of the album, but a separate single, but still how this catalog of songs really, I think, gestated pretty slowly. And again, even though, So Chapel Rhone seems like this kind of overnight success story is it's not that at all. Yeah. It's been a slow grinding ride to the top.

In fact, I remember last year, Chapel Rhone performed at a student music festival at USC. Noah. And one of my students told me about they were so excited. Chapel Rone is coming. I was like, who is that? Like, I mean, that doesn't mean anything to me. And fast forward another year. And she's the biggest thing on planet Earth.

Yeah, but it's not an overnight story. Right. Oh, no, no. This is like a set of themes and a set of personal self-discovery that she's been trying to make that she's shared in intimate detail across this album and songs like, Good Luck, Babe. Yeah, I mean, certainly here you have a song in 2020 about her really sort of coming into her own sexuality and talking about going out to a club in West Hollywood, a famously queer, positive space. These are themes that continue to unwind in the songs that we're hearing that are more content. But yeah, she's been doing this for many years now.

We'll keep listening to Pink Pony Club, but quick diversion. Yeah. Because this song, I said this is kind of her origin story, both of her as a person, as a sexual being, as someone who's moved from Missouri to L.A., left behind her Midwestern princess identity and embraced this new flamboyant pink pony identity. Our colleague at Vox, Constance Grady, wrote a great explainer about Chapel's story. And she points out that this song also was a new musical direction for Chapel Rhone. Before Pink Pony Club and this collaboration with Dan Nigro, this is not what this artist sounded like. If you listen to a song from 2017 called Good Hurt, we hear a very different kind of sonic approach. I know I'm impatient, bite your tongue, or I'll do it for you.

You can taste hesitation, mouth-up-mouth conversations, and I've even tried medication, cold tired of frustration. You can call it foundation. I'll call you when I'm wasted. Wow. Okay, so contemporary Chapel Rowan is known for dressing in drag and being incredibly performative. And yet the way that she sings now is so raw. And so it sounds like herself.

This older recording that you're bringing up, it sounds like the most generic indie pop Spotify playlist, like super intense cursive singing, a lot of autotune. It doesn't sound like anyone in particular. It's very generic. If you want an extensive explanation of cursive singing, go find our episode from last summer about the topic. And you're right, Charlie.

which is not to say this is a bad sign. Nope. I think it's quite powerful in a lot of ways. It's performative. But you're right. It's not distinctive in the same way. It's like her performing an established style. Exactly.

That's what it is. She's performing pop rather than just being a pop star. So Pink Pony Club is both like this personal coming out story. And it's also kind of this musical coming out story. It's going to cause a scene. She sees her baby girl. I know she's going to scream go. You dance at the club, oh, my.

Like, that is a pivotal moment, I think. This album is called The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern princess, and I feel like this moment is the fall, so to speak, the fall of the old identity and the birth of the new one. You know, shedding the past, rebuking your parents to a degree, and embracing this new identity, this new community, and this new sound that is distinctive and holy year. Okay, I've completely lost track of the five reasons that Chaloreau is the sound of 2024.

But I feel like a two hundred refresher? No, no, it's okay. I think we can leave behind your list of call. She's won me over. No, we've been going through. We've been talking about them this whole time, Charlie. Don't feign obtuseness on my podcast. I'm just dumb.

I'm just a simple man. I can only hold three things in my head at the same time. Pink pony club. I got it. There we go. Let's just. That's plenty. Done.

Now, after listening to this constellation of songs, I think we've established a number of lyrical and musical reasons why Chapel Rhone is the sound of 2024. We've heard her lyrical precision, her brilliant cataloging of desire and sexual discovery, delivered with a voice that is clear and bright, supported by perfect, subtle production choices, all delivered with the sound that's been marinating for years. You know, this is an exquisite formula for success, but it's not the only thing. If we zoom out, this music comes at a key moment

in our sociopolitical landscape when queer and trans rights are under assault all over the country and the world. Yeah, we're living in a moment where drag performance is being stigmatized and in some cases outlawed by conservative pundits and politicians. So these songs about unabashed yearning and queer desire aren't just personal stories.

They're political ones as well. And they're so effective because of their unbridled power. And Charlie, they are just so much fun. Credits in 5, 6, 7, 8. S-W-I-C-H-E-D-O-N-N. P-O-B. Switched-on-Pop is engineered by Brandon McFarlane, edited by Art Chung, illustrations by R.S. Gottlie. Our executive producer is Nishak Kerou, a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network,

and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. You can find more of our podcast at switchedonpop.com and on social media at Switched on Pop. We'll see you next week with a brand new episode, and until then, thanks for listening. Spotify has has arrived the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute

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