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Tag: Chappell Roan The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

  • Chappell Roan’s VMAs Performance: A Nod to How We’re Still in Medieval Times

    Chappell Roan’s VMAs Performance: A Nod to How We’re Still in Medieval Times

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    There’s no doubt that Medieval Times is still a major institution in the Midwest, with one of its precious few locations being in Chicago (more specifically, Schaumburg, Illinois). And, of course, being a “Midwest princess,” one would like to think that Chappell Roan was vaguely aware of her Medieval Times aura as she took the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards for the first time (on the now always inauspicious date of September 11th). That’s right, like many other celebrities (despite Roan’s continued claim that she’s just “a random bitch”), she schlepped all the way to Long Island for this big debut at the UBS Arena—even going so far as to cancel other scheduled performance dates in Amsterdam and Paris in early September (perhaps not wanting to “overextend” herself while rehearsing for the VMAs) for the sake of making “icon history.”

    And that she did, confirming her increasing comparisons to Kate Bush (mainly on the vocal intonation front, but also embodying the “queer energy” Bush gave off despite being a straight woman…not to mention her ultra-camp sensibilities) as Roan opted to dress as a knight in shining armor for her live rendition of “Good Luck, Babe!” (a standalone single that was released months after The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess). As a matter of fact, there’s an immortal image of Bush dressed as a knight during a photoshoot for a 1980 edition of Melody Maker. But “maybe” Roan didn’t know about that before running with this particular concept and visual.

    In any case, to set the tone for this poignant costume during her performance, Roan arrived on the red carpet in what can best be described as a “Maid Marian getup” (courtesy of a sheer dress by Y/Project) and coordinating cape. Roan, for good measure, additionally packed a sword (how innuendo-laden) in hand as a prop to round out an aesthetic intended to convey that just because she’s a woman, it doesn’t mean she’s a “delicate flower.” Indeed, wielding that sword was in keeping with her snapping back at a press member (that reportedly told her to “shut the fuck up”), “You shut the fuck up! …Not me.”

    Later “explaining” her outburst, Roan remarked, “[The red carpet] is quite overwhelming and quite scary. I think for someone who gets a lot of anxiety around people yelling at you, the carpet is horrifying. And I need to—I yelled back. I yelled back! You don’t get to yell at me like that.” Such “bravado” was an ideal match for her knightly image as she defended her own honor—a theme that goes hand in hand with her entire “brand.” That is to say, women don’t need rescuing—they can ultimately save themselves (as Carrie Bradshaw, of all people, once tried to explain to Charlotte York in a season three episode of Sex and the City called “Where There’s Smoke…”). They just need a night on the town (ideally at a drag bar) to recover from almost any slight. Emphasis on the word almost.

    Alas, Roan is finding it more and more difficult to enjoy such therapeutic nights out on the town as her fame level eclipses her ability to do “normal person things.” Thus, dressing up as a knight also seems to speak to Roan wanting to take back her power by “valoring up.” However, that’s not the only subtext one can take away from the costuming and misleadingly “intricate” set design (modeled after, what else, a medieval castle). There’s also the undeniable message being sent that, despite Kamala Harris running for president, the U.S. (in particular) is still living in some very Dark Ages—complete with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 that has led to numerous states outright banning abortion. And while Roan claims her costumes aren’t that “deep” and that, most of the time, she thinks she just “looks hot” in them, the decision to don medieval garb doesn’t exactly feel like a coincidence in the current climate. Especially one in which Donald Trump (despite everything about his inherent nature and varied illegal activities that have been revealed to the public since 2016) still has almost half of the country’s vote as of September 2024.

    As for Roan’s Medieval Times energy, it bears noting that, in 2017 (the year of #MeToo, incidentally), the franchise changed the show (as they’re known for doing about every six years) to include a queen at the center of the event rather than a king. With Roan’s medieval interpretation, however, the “lady” herself becomes the “man.” Or at least one butch-ass bitch. Bedecked in her armor and faux chainmail, the performance begins with Roan standing behind the gates of the castle wielding a crossbow with a fiery arrow. She soon struts outside of the gate (opened for her by a bevy of “lackey knights”), approaches the center of the stage, turns around and then aims it directly back toward the gates, which, in turn, light up into a fiery pattern on select bars. The lackey knights then dance and preen around her with swords in hand as Roan boasts about how she “told you so.”

    As the fire burns in a glorious blaze behind her (including over-the-top explosions on the spires of the castle itself—courtesy of a screen, [un]naturally), the chaoticness of everything around her echoes the ways in which Roan is seeking to “burn it all to the ground.” From conventional pop stardom to the ongoing political “safeness” of most everything in pop culture—even in spite of all the insistence about how much “things have changed.” Of course, whether she “intended” to say all of this isn’t the point. It’s right there, between the lines displayed by those spiky, oppressive gates.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Chappell Roan’s Attempt to “Gen Z-ify” Fame By Setting “Healthy Boundaries” (Via the Shame Game)

    Chappell Roan’s Attempt to “Gen Z-ify” Fame By Setting “Healthy Boundaries” (Via the Shame Game)

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    While some might think that “Gen Z-ifying” fame refers to how virality through TikTok is the only way to become a “star” (with no staying power) nowadays, the truth is that Chappell Roan just summed up the true meaning of it on her own TikTok account. This by demanding that fans stop being, well, creepy. As though Roan has no concept that the parasocial relationship train can’t stop once it’s left the station. But then, what is one to expect from a novice to the scene? For, even more than being a parent, the phrase “there is no manual for blah blah blah” applies to fame and how one’s life immediately changes after it hits (just ask the “very demure, very mindful” bia). But it seems the aspect of celebrity that famous people consistently wish they could do without is the obsessive nature of fans, which has only grown more dangerous and disturbing in the digital age.

    For Roan, the obsession people have with her has already proven to be too much. And, even though she’s technically been in this business since 2015, when she first signed a deal with Atlantic Records, nothing prepared her for the sudden frenzy for all things Chappell as 2024 rolled around. She already addressed how overwhelming this newfound “icon status” has been for her, namely back in June during a Raleigh concert date, when Roan told the audience, “I just want to be honest with the crowd. I feel a little off today, because I think my career is going really fast and it’s hard to keep up. I’m just being honest, I’m having a hard time today.” Roan has also alluded to her disdain for fans that feel they should have constant access to her in an interview for The Comment Section with Drew Afualo, insisting that when she’s performing or giving an interview, she’s simply “clocked in” like anyone else with a “normal job” (which, again, is not what she has). When she’s offstage, however, Roan explained to Afualo, “Bitch, I’m not at work.” Thus, do not approach her as though she is.

    As for the massive crowds she’s been drawing in everywhere from Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza, in spite of how “ready for it” everyone seems to be for Roan to keep releasing new music, all signs seem to point to her “pumping the brakes” on the whole goddamn thing as a result of being so sketched out by the, let’s say, intensity of certain fans. Thus, she took to TikTok to say, “If you saw a random woman on the street, would you yell at her from the window?” Roan already sets herself up for failure with that question because, for many sober men and drunk people of all creeds, the answer is a resounding yes. She goes on, “Would you harass her in public? Would you go up to a random lady and say, ‘Can I get a photo with you?’ Would you be offended if she says no to your time because she has her own time? Would you stalk her family, would you follow her around? I’m a random bitch, you’re a random bitch.” Again, Roan sets herself up for all the holes in her “argument” for privacy to be easily poked through. Because, no, she is not a random bitch at all. She has achieved that thing that so many people wish they could: fame and acclaim. Ergo, becoming a public figure. A status that automatically changes the game in terms of what can be “done” to you.

    Concluding her tirade against creeps with, “Just think about that for a second. I don’t care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job, the career field I’ve chosen. That does not make it okay, that doesn’t make it normal… [a word that shouldn’t really be in an drag queen enthusiast’s vocabulary, but whatever]. I don’t give a fuck if you think it’s selfish of me to say no for a photo, or for your time, or to…for a hug. It’s weird how people think that you know a person just ‘cause you see them online or you listen to the art they make.” Here, too, Roan sets herself up for disaster because a key part of the reason that many fans do listen to this “art” is precisely because they feel like they know the person who made it. See something of themselves in that person and, therefore, feel connected.

    In the past, many musicians have only courted that perception, including the ultimate millennial pop star, Taylor Swift. Indeed, part of Swift’s longevity has been her acumen in cultivating parasocial relationships with fans. It can be argued, in fact, that fame wouldn’t really exist without this dynamic. At least not the kind of fame that constitutes being a global pop superstar. As for Roan continuing to insist that “it’s fucking weird” for people to glom onto a musician in such a way, she might need to be reminded that her entire shtick is centered around “weird” a.k.a. drag looks. And honestly, it’s no weirder than all of us being on some rock spinning around in the middle of space with absolutely no idea how we got here other than some unprovable postulations (including the “God theory”).

    Of course, Roan isn’t the only one who has expressed disdain for fan behavior in recent years. Take, for example, a video that made the rounds after the 2018 Met Gala, when Lana Del Rey (still in her “Bible” costume) was about to oblige a fan that asked for a selfie. When he tried to re-angle the phone she was holding to take the picture, she thrust it back and him and said, “You know what, fuck it” (though it sounded sort of like “fuck off” or “fuck you” as well). It speaks to what Roan said above about not “owing” anyone a photo. That a fan should be grateful to receive any such request fulfillment at all—not further annoy the famous person by trying to control how the selfie looks. By the same token, of course, there’s always the valid argument that fans are literally paying for how famous people live, so shouldn’t they be entitled to such things? And, if Roan wants to make analogies between famous people and regular people, it can be said that regular people’s bosses do pretty much the same thing, constantly infiltrating their lives outside of work because they pay for their existence, as it were.  

    Roan’s disgust with fan (or “stan”) behavior is, what’s more, in direct contrast to the “teachings” millennials have carried on from generations of famous people past. Case in point, during Paris Hilton’s 2020 documentary, This Is Paris, Kim Kardashian commented, “I think the best advice that she ever could’ve given me was just watching her.” Watching her constantly pose with fans whenever they asked for a photo, watching her being bombarded by paparazzi without ever lashing out, watching her personal life get violated in all the most invasive possible ways (Kim was obviously studying the sex tape aspect of that most closely). In the same documentary, Hilton admitted, “Even though it was so hectic and insane and just nonstop…I also loved the attention.” At least she can admit that. Roan, it seems, is struggling to acknowledge that attention is what she wanted for so long, only to be met with the “be careful what you wish for” caveat.

    And yet, in an interview for Q with Tom Power, Roan made a prescient remark, saying, “This industry, like, you really flourish if you don’t protect yourself.” Power clarifies, “You flourish if you don’t protect yourself?” “Mhmm, yes” she replies sagely. “Like if you don’t look after yourself you can have a pretty good, amazing career. You’ve seen that kind of thing happen?” “We’ve all seen that kind of thing happen.” (To be sure, there’s no example more textbook than Britney Spears.) In the same interview, Roan goes on to say that touring is her favorite part of the job, even though one would think that might be the ripest scenario for witnessing the apex of “creep behavior” among fans. But “creepy,” like everything else, means different things to different people. While one fan might believe it’s perfectly normal to throw their mother’s ashes onstage, another might simply want to become “iconic” in their own right by engaging with a certain opening lyric in a viral way. In effect, the shades of creep in fandoms are multi-hued and numerous, and certainly can’t be contained by a mere “read” from an honorary drag queen/Midwest princess.

    To boot, there are some who would still posit that the “dark side of fame” is but a small price to pay for all the benefits that go with it, not least of which is avoiding, more than “normals,” an overpowering sense of insignificance. Hell, look at Kevin Bacon’s recent comment on how terrible it was to not be famous for a day, stating, “Nobody recognized me. People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.’” Perhaps Roan ought to try out his experiment as well.

    This isn’t an “asking for it” type of logic that men try so often to use on women for how they dress in terms of saying that those who want to be entertainers should know what they’re getting into. That they “asked for it” when they made the Faustian pact. But it is reminding those Gen Z famous ones, like Roan, who expect to set up “healthy boundaries” for such an uncontrollable entity that doing so is impossible without stepping out of the spotlight altogether. Something Josh Hartnett, a fellow Midwest “prince” (from Minnesota), recently addressed in an interview with The Guardian, recalling of his white-hot moment as Hollywood’s most sought-after heartthrob, “People’s attention to me at the time was borderline unhealthy… There were incidents. People showed up at my house. People that were stalking me… a guy showed up at one of my premieres with a gun, claiming to be my father. He ended up in prison. There were lots of things. It was a weird time. And I wasn’t going to be grist for the mill.” That word again: “weird.” As in: celebrity is fucking weird. Which is why some people are built for it, and some people aren’t. In the years (or maybe just months) ahead, the audience will soon find out if Roan is.

    Who knows? Maybe her ire for “fandom” is a passing fancy. After all, she’s not the first famous person to comment on her gross fans. Take, for example, Madonna’s resurfaced 1991 interview in The Washington Post, during which she unabashedly declares, “I don’t mind when people come up to me in a restaurant and go, ‘God, I think you’re great.’ I love that. It’s the obsessive fanatics whose attention seems very hostile. It’s beyond admiration. It’s very crazy…” That might sound “Gen Z” enough to go along with Roan’s sentiments, but M gave away her boomer nature when she added, “It’s always fat people too. They are the most unattractive social outcasts, like really overweight girls or guys with lots of acne that follow me around and pester me. It’s frightening because not only are they bothering me, but they’re horrible to look at too.”

    At the same time, Madonna and Roan have more in common than some might think, not just because of their “slow burn” first albums taking a full year to catch on, but also because Madonna hails from the heart of the Midwest as well. Which is exactly why she also pronounced, “It’s a very boring, humdrum place. I was raised in that world. I know the ignorance that they wallow in—and that they prefer to live in—because it’s easier for them. I’m just trying to pull all their Band-Aids off.” Roan might be trying to do the same with fans who think “creepy behavior” is acceptable/par for the course, but one doubts it will effect the kind of change that vogueing did (i.e., gay-ifying the straights without them realizing it).

    Fame is one thing that can’t be Gen Z-ified, unless it becomes something else altogether. And if it did, that would likely only make it all the more “democratized.” So what’s really the point of wanting to be famous at all if everyone gets treated the same? Like the “random bitch” Roan claims she wants to be treated as.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • From “I Kissed A Girl” to “Good Luck, Babe!”: Queer Yearning and Regret Gets A More Layered and Genuine Upgrade in Pop Song Form

    From “I Kissed A Girl” to “Good Luck, Babe!”: Queer Yearning and Regret Gets A More Layered and Genuine Upgrade in Pop Song Form

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    In 2008, Katy Perry caught her big break with “I Kissed A Girl” (made all the more retroactively cringe because Dr. Luke co-produced it). After years of failed attempts at trying to “crack the industry,” complete with an early iteration as a Christian singer (her first release was a gospel album called Katy Hudson), Perry found that going “in total defiance of God” was the better route when it came to attracting an audience. Hence, the lead single from her first “real” album (it’s sort of like how no one counts Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant as a “real” LDR album) being “I Kissed A Girl.” Otherwise known as: the ultimate straight girl tease. 

    Although the song was widely embraced at the time (as evidenced by its chart position at number one on the Billboard Hot 100), it still didn’t go without its criticism, even then. For example, of Perry’s “cosplaying” at bicuriousness, Sal Cinquemani of Slant remarked that “its appropriation of the gay lifestyle exists for the sole purpose of garnering attention—both from Perry’s boyfriend and her audience.” In other words, her lack of “authenticity” was a major source of contention. Playing the queer card not because she genuinely felt it in her bones, but because it was “salacious” and “scandalous” (indeed, looking back, 2008 wasn’t as endlessly modern as it thought it was, election of a Black U.S. president or not). A way to garner simultaneous titillation and outrage.

    This included the Kinga Burza-directed music video, which also served as the first bona fide visual from Katy Perry as Katy Perry (not Hudson). Sure, “Ur So Gay” (clearly, Perry has a thing with homosexuality) got a music video accompaniment as well, but it was little more than Barbie and Ken dolls acting out Perry’s venomous lyrics, giving the chance for Katy Barbie to stare judgmentally at the “so gay” guy’s 00s-era social media profile, which looked like a mashup of MySpace and Facebook called, what else, “facespace.” Interspersed shots of Perry playing guitar against rough-hewn animation of a blue sky filled with puffy white clouds has the faint echo of Jill Sobule’s own surrealist, cartoony “I Kissed A Girl” video from 1995 (featuring none of other than Fabio as the hetero love interest, well-known at that time for his romance novel covers). And yes, Sobule was well-aware of Perry effectively “stealing” her song concept and making it far less genuine (not least of which was because Sobule is actually bisexual). There are even lyrics in Sobule’s single (e.g., “I kissed a girl, her lips were sweet/She was just like kissin’ me”) that Perry mirrors in lines like, “I kissed a girl and I liked it/The taste of her cherry ChapStick” and “Soft skin, red lips, so kissable.” 

    As for her inspiration, it’s been said that a little drunken “tee-hee-hee” beso with Miley Cyrus inspired it, but Perry herself has stated a few times that a teenage crush of hers did, an “older friend.” Not to mention the lore that Scarlett Johansson’s lips also inspired it. At one point, Perry insisted she had never actually kissed the girl who served as her “creative stimulator” (“I never kissed her or anything. In retrospect, she was my muse for that song”) while, at another, she said, “I did kiss her. I was totally obsessed with her. She was beautiful—porcelain skin, perfect lips.” Whatever the case, it’s clear Perry’s heart isn’t in this song, that it’s total pandering to the straight male fantasy of two women kissing. 

    Enter Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” sixteen years later. A complex, densely layered tale of Roan enduring the kind of shit Perry probably would’ve pulled on a legitimate gay or bi girl. Granted, the person detailed in Roan’s tale really is queer, and is simply trying to deny it. Perhaps later on, she’ll even attempt likening it to “a phase,” if anyone should ever find out. Like her straight husband, who Roan prophesizes about in the verse, “When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night/With your head in your hands, you’re nothing more than his wife/And when you think about me, all of those years ago/You’re standing face to face with ‘I told you so.’” Ouch. It’s certainly not likely that Perry will have that issue, waking up next to Orlando Bloom and continuing to dress in pinup-inspired attire that harkens back to the 50s and 60s a.k.a. the height of when compulsory heterosexuality reigned supreme (to that point, it seems no coincidence that the Stonewall riots happened at the end of the 60s). 

    Attire that she also wears in the video for “I Kissed A Girl,” heavy-handed with the “symbolism” of Perry cradling a pussy cat in her arms while viewers are treated to an overhead shot of her lying “seductively” on her bed. This while she sings, “This was never the way I planned/Not my intention/I got so brave, drink in hand/Lost my discretion/It’s not what I’m used to/Just wanna try you on/I’m curious for you/Caught my attention.” The ingrained sense of internalized homophobia that Perry was raised with is rampant in these lyrics. This much is made even more glaring when Perry adds, “It’s not what/Good girls do/Not how they should behave.” Roan, too, has her own issues with being a “fallen good girl,” but she addresses them in a manner that isn’t overtly coming from a straight girl playing at queer. 

    Although Roan’s first single with a music video, “Good Hurt” (released in 2017), might have been nebulous to listeners who didn’t yet hear the official word of Roan’s queerness, “Good Luck, Babe!” leaves no room for “gray areas” (only gay ones) on the sexuality front. And it continues Roan’s tradition of queer aesthetics in her music videos (established with “Casual” and “Red Wine Supernova”). Something that would have been anathema to her during her younger years. For, just as Perry did, Roan grew up in a strict religious household. And Roan’s own austere upbringing informs many of her songs and videos. For example, when she mocks the “God Hates Fags” line with a sign on someone’s lawn in the “Red Wine Supernova” video that reads, “God Hates Magic.” Moments later, a female magician “poofs” that sign into a rose as an instantly turned-on Roan watches from afar (much to the dismay of the old neighbor woman to whom the sign belonged). Roan’s genuineness when it comes to getting across the magic and electricity of a relationship or sexual encounter with another girl in most of her songs, not just “Good Luck, Babe!,” obviously blows “I Kissed A Girl”’s minge out of the water (side note: the presence of water is also a not-so-coincidental staple in Roan’s videos, including “Die Young” [a title that has to be a nod to one of her influences, Kesha] and “Casual”). 

    And yet, it’s clear she’s still haunted by the repression and oppression of her past. Case in point, featuring a song called “After Midnight” on her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, that opens with the lines, “My mama said, ‘Nothing good happens/When it’s late and you’re dancing alone’/She’s in my head saying, ‘It’s not attractive/Wearing that dress and red lipstick’/This is what I wanted/This is what I like/I’ve been a good girl for a long time.” Of course, we know what happens to “good girls” who keep their lid screwed on too tightly for too long: they explode. Which is what Roan did after what can be called her “clean-faced Adele” period that pervaded music videos like “Good Hurt,” “Die Young” and “Sugar High.” But once she let the influence of drag culture fully take over, so, too, did her unbridled embracement of queerness. 

    “Good Luck, Babe!” is a new apex of that embracement for Roan, who stated that the song is about “wishing good luck [regardless of being facetious] to someone who is denying fate.” And, more to the point, someone who is denying fate by denying their own sexuality. Something that Roan herself knows all about having grown up in an environment where, as she admits, she was conditioned to believe that “being gay was bad and a sin.” After her move to L.A., that perspective changed drastically (just further proof for the religious zealots that California is for pinkos and queers, and will turn everyone else into the same). 

    Having been on both sides of queer—denial and embracement—Roan speaks with a wisdom that is pure and true when she tells the erstwhile object of her affection on “Good Luck, Babe!,” “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/Good luck, babe (well, good luck).” The “good luck,” obviously, is filled with sarcasm, for Roan knows better than anyone that to suppress your sexuality is to suppress your entire identity. It is nothing like the “I was so drunk”/“experimenting just for kicks” vibe of “I Kissed A Girl,” wherein Perry’s own ideas of compulsory heterosexuality are manifest in lyrics such as, “It felt so wrong, it felt so right/Don’t mean I’m in love tonight” and “Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent.” 

    Incidentally, an article about Roan’s success and first album mentions Katy Perry specifically as an early influence: “She was enthralled and scandalized by the pop music of the late 00s and early 10s, such as Kesha [fun fact: Roan’s real name is Kayleigh Rose as Kesha’s is Kesha Rose], Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.” Kesha, appropriately enough (considering she was under Dr. Luke’s thumb at that time), actually appears in the “I Kissed A Girl” video among the gaggle of girls “frolicking” with Perry as rose petals and white feathers (from the requisite cliché pillow fight, duh) cascade down all around them.

    The “twist” at the end, however, is that it was seemingly just a dream, with Perry waking up next to her boyfriend in bed. Unless, in truth, it describes the exact scene Roan talks about when a queer girl keeps trying to play it straight her whole life. But, na, that just ain’t the case with Perry.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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