“I’d be more successful wearing a suit”

Chappell Roan is unstoppable.

Over the past 12 months, the 26-year-old has become pop’s happiest star. A bright, flame-haired sensation, her songs are as raw as they are colorful.

His debut album, released in 2023, has topped the UK charts for the second time. Next week, he’ll pick up six Grammys, including Best New Artist. And BBC Radio 1 named it after him The sound of 2025.

Success has been sweetened by the fact that his former record label refused to release many of the songs that blew up the charts last year.

“They were saying, ‘This isn’t going to work. We don’t get it,'” Roan told Radio 1’s Jack Saunders.

Reaching pop’s A-list isn’t a vindication, it’s a revolution.

The 26-year-old is the first female pop star to achieve mainstream success as an openly queer person, rather than coming out as part of the post-fame narrative.

On a more personal level, he’s finally done well enough to move into a home of his own and get a rescue cat named Cherub Lou.

“He’s super tiny, his breath smells really bad and he doesn’t meow,” said the singer.

If having a kitten is a perk of being famous, Roan bristles with downsides.

He spoke out against bad fans, calling it “creepy behavior”. From the people who harass you in airport queues and “bug” your parents’ house. Last September, she went viral for swearing at a photographer who had been shouting abuse at the stars on the red carpet at the MTV Awards.

“I was looking around, and I was like, ‘Is that what people are okay with all the time? And I’m supposed to act normal? This is not normal. This is crazy,'” she recalls.

The incident made headlines. British tabloids called it the “tantrum” of a “spoiled diva”.

But Roan makes no apologies.

“I’ve been disrespectful in that way my whole life, but now I have cameras on me, and I’m also a pop star, and those things don’t mix. It’s like oil and water.”

Roan says musicians are trained to be obedient. Standing up for yourself is portrayed as whiny or ungrateful, and bucking convention comes at a cost.

“I think I’d actually be more successful if I was okay wearing a cape,” he laughs.

“If I could overcome my more basic instincts, where my heart goes,”Stop, stop, stop, you’re not okay‘, I would be bigger.

“I’d be a lot bigger… And I’d still be on tour right now.”

In fact, Roane rejected pressure to extend the 2024 tour to protect his physical and mental health. He credits this decision to his late grandfather.

“He said something that I think about in every move I make with my career. There are always options.”

“So when someone says, ‘Do this gig because you’ll never be offered that much money again,’ I mean, who cares?

“If I don’t feel like doing this right now, there are always options. There’s no shortage of options. I think about it all the time.”

As fans will know by now, Roan was born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz and grew up in the Bible Belt town of Willard, Missouri.

The eldest of four children, he wanted to be an actor, but for a long time it seemed that his future would be in sports. He raced at the state competition level, and almost went to college for cross country.

Then, at the age of 13, he took part in a singing competition and won. Before long, she wrote her first song, about a Mormon boy who wasn’t allowed to date outside of his faith.

He took his stage name as a tribute to his grandfather Dennis K Chappell and his favorite song, a western ballad called The Strawberry Roan.

“He was very funny and very smart,” she recalls. “And I don’t think he ever questioned my ability.

“A lot of people were like, ‘You should totally go country,’ or ‘You should try Christian music.’ And he never told me to do anything.

“He was like, ‘You don’t need a plan B. The only person who said ‘do it’.

Eventually, one of his compositions, a gothic ballad called Die Young, caught the attention of Atlantic Records, and he signed him when he was just 17 years old.

Moving to LA, he recorded and released his first EP, School Nights, in 2017. It was a solid but noteworthy affair, immersed in the sounds of Lana Del Rey and Lorde.

Roan found his own sound when a group of gay friends dragged him to a bar.

“I walked into that club in West Hollywood and it was like heaven.” he told the BBC last year. “It was amazing to see all these people who were happy and confident in their bodies.

“And the go-go dancers! I was fascinated. I couldn’t stop watching them. I was like, ‘I have to do that.’

She didn’t become a dancer, but she wrote a song imagining what it would be like to be one and how her mother would react. Roan called out to him Pink Pony Club after a strip bar in his hometown.

“That song changed everything,” he says. “He put me in a new category.

“I never thought I could be a ‘pop star girl’ and Pink Pony made me do it.”

His label disagreed. They refused to release the Pink Pony Club for two years. Shortly after its completion, Roan was let go in a pandemic-era cost-cutting move.

Bruised but not broken, he returned home and spent the next year serving coffee at a drive-through donut shop.

“It had an absolutely positive effect on me,” she says. “You know what it’s like to clean a public toilet. That’s very important.”

The period was transformative in other ways. She saved her winnings, had her heart broken by “a person with pale blue eyes,” returned to Los Angeles, and gave herself a year to make it up.

It took a little longer than that, but he hit the ground running.

During his exile, Roane kept in touch with his Pink Pony Club writer, Daniel Nigro.

Olivia was also working with another up-and-coming singer named Rodrigo and, as her career took off, Roan got a courtside seat, supporting Rodrigo on tour and backing vocals on his second album, Guts.

More importantly, Nigro used the momentum to sign Roan to his label and secure the release of his debut album in September 2023.

At first, Roan’s original label seemed correct. Sales were disappointing and audiences were slow to catch on because they didn’t like his outlandish in-your-face whispering and confessional leanings.

But those songs came to life on stage. Big, fun and designed for audience participation, Roan’s powerful voice and great stage persona have taken it to the top.

“A drag queen doesn’t go on stage to appease people,” he says. “A drag queen doesn’t say things to flatter people. A drag queen makes you blush, you know what I mean? Expect the same energy at my show.”

Arguably, it was a live appearance at last year’s Coachella festival that propelled him to the top of pop.

Dressed in a cut-out PVC top that proclaimed “Eat Me,” she rocked the Gobi tent like a head tent, criss-crossing the stage and training the audience in her expansive choreography to Hot To Go.

He then looked straight into the camera and dedicated a song to his ex.

“Fuck I know you’re watching… and all these horrible things that happen to you are karma.”

The clip went viral and soon so did his career.

For the summer, all his shows were revamped. Festivals had to move to bigger stages. When he played Lollapalooza in August, he drew the largest daytime crowd ever.

“It only takes a decade,” he says. “That’s what I tell everybody. ‘If you’re okay with taking 10 years, you’re okay.'”

As fans discovered his debut album, Roan also released a single: a sarcastic piece of synth-pop called Good Luck Babe, which became his hit.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever said this in an interview, but it was originally called Good Luck, Jane,” he revealed.

“I wanted to fall in love with my best friend, and then be like, ‘Ha, ha, I don’t like it back, I like boys.’

“And it was, ‘Okay, well, good luck with this, jane‘”.

A masterclass in pop storytelling, Good Luck Babe has a proper three-act structure, with a killer middle-eight payoff and a chorus you can’t shake.

However, Roan was surprised by his success.

“I threw it away, I don’t know what this is going to do, and it took the whole year!”

The question, of course, is what makes the star, now that it’s the Sound of 2025.

He’s already previewing two new songs, The Subway and The Giver, in concert, but all he’ll reveal about a second album is that he’s “more reluctant to be sad or dark.”

“Party is very good,” he explained.

Looking back on the past 12 months, he’s philosophical about what it means to be pop’s hottest new product.

“Many people think that fame is the pinnacle of success, because what more could you want than adoration?”

Roan admits that the admiration of strangers is “more addictive” than he expected.

“For example, I understand why I’m so afraid of losing this feeling.

“It’s so scary to think that one day people won’t care about you like they do now, and I think (that idea) lives very differently in women’s brains than it does in men.”

After all, he has decided that success and failure are “out of my control.” Instead, he wants to make good choices.

“If I look back and say, ‘I didn’t fall under the weight of hope, and I wasn’t abused or blackmailed,’ (then) at least I stayed true to my heart,” he says.

“As I said before, there are always options.”

Chappell Roan was named BBC Radio 1’s Sound Of 2025 by a panel of over 180 musicians, critics and music industry experts.

The first five, in order, were: