Chappell Roan

Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe! (single, 2024)

We’ve said it many times before, and the facts keep proving it: building a popstar is arduous, demanding work, one that all too often turns out to be a sunk investment. Luckily, sometimes the whole equation just goes out the window, and from the cracks in the machine emerge magnetic personalities, artists so irresistible that they command all the attention for themselves. In today’s frantic, distracted times, a breakthrough that consolidates into something lasting is becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon; but every so often the material is so undeniable that it not only produces an unstoppable wave, but also pushes us to look back, to recover what the previous shadowy period had left unlit.

Chappell Roan, the brilliant drag persona behind which Kayleigh Rose Amstutz hides, is the protagonist of this striking rise to the top of the charts, the object of a growing admiration that seems to widen week by week. The turning point was her Coachella performance last April, a set meant to showcase the highlights of her debut album “The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess”, but which above all found its true anchor in “Good Luck, Babe!”, in the expressive power of a chapter meant to introduce a new creative season. And it’s here that the story takes a different turn.

It could all have gone wrong, ending in nothing, as happens to so many musicians with big ambitions: after all, this isn’t the best time to be a drag queen in the United States, even more so if your lyrics explicitly tackle lesbian themes, from a perspective that swings between serious and playful. Sure, the potential had already been spotted by mother label Atlantic years earlier, but after a naive debut EP, the label was quick to cut ties with Amstutz, describing her as not appealing enough to a mainstream audience. Support, in short, wasn’t exactly overwhelming, but perseverance paid off: between a stint at a drive-through and work as a production assistant, the decisive factor would prove to be her collaboration with Dan Nigro, who was at the same time also working on the debut of a certain Olivia Rodrigo. It’s a slow-burning process, a build-up made of singles released at a steady pace, but which already hint at a very particular taste for camp, for coups de theatre, for an imagery that, against the usual 80s-style synths, sets a greater sonic variety, played out through scorching electroclash detours and a punk-girl touch modeled on classic 90s sounds. And all of this never loses sight of the ironic nature of the lyrics, of the proudly queer approach, never sacrificed for anyone's convenience.

Sure, the melodies still haven’t fully broken free from a certain Swift-like touch, but what Chappell Roan delivers is enough to make her following grow steadily bigger, to bring on headliner shows, and eventually to land her a deal with Amusement (Nigro’s sub-label under Island) and then her debut album, “The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess”. More of a compilation than a true collection of new material, it holds all the flair and verve of a songwriter who has patiently earned her stripes, though still held back by a creative voice that’s a bit too inconsistent, lacking focus. Still, the fire burns, consuming every doubt around it, with the desire for self-expression winning out over everything else.

After a new tour that takes her across the States to promote the album, it’s time to turn the page, to keep the pedal down on interpretation, on emotional intensity, beyond any mask or pantomime. No sooner said than done: still with Dan Nigro behind the desk, “Good Luck, Babe!” is released on April 5th and marks the first step of a new era, a transformation so evident that it draws a sharp line with the past. That the breakthrough would come this way might not have been foreseeable, but it certainly arrived at the right moment.

There’s a classic air to the song’s three minutes and thirty-nine seconds. Classic not so much in how it fits into more or less established, historicized traditions, but classic in its breadth, in its structure, managing to feel current even while doing without contemporary trends. In an age of vibes, of TikTok-friendly soundbites, of simplified lines suited to any generalist playlist, a song built with such “canonical” composition feels like an anomaly, a return to a modus operandi that the charts had all but abandoned. Verse, chorus, bridge: all the fundamentals of song-form are there, shaped around a sound that is pure delight. Only superficially tied to the synth-pop of her debut album, the arrangement instead veers toward more baroque, decadent shores, full of strings and chamber-music breaks, recapturing that kind of romantic aura found in late-period Roxy Music or Japan. Kate Bush? While it's true that Roan's theatricality might align her with one of the most influential artists of all time, her expressive approach is nonetheless softer, leaning more toward the wave revival carried out by Gwen Stefani on her first solo album (the mind drifts to the sensuality of “Cool”) and the pathos of Fleetwood Mac’s “Tango In The Night”, in an interplay of phrasing and timbral touches that fully supports the intensity of the vocals.

Already the singing gives it away: Roan is certainly no stranger to characterful performances, possessing in herself the charisma and emotional understanding of great figures of the past. Never as much as in "Good Luck, Babe!" does every tiny shift in tone, every choice of phrasing, so fully demonstrate a voice that becomes one with the lyrics, fully inhabiting the content of what it describes. It's impossible to know who she's addressing, who this phantom woman is, unable to come to terms with her own homosexuality, but the theme of "comphet" (compulsory heterosexuality, if you will), of the damage and pain it causes to those who live it—and above all to those who have to endure it—has rarely found a place in music, let alone in anthemic pop songs.

Right from the start, Roan makes clear the emotional trajectory, the tone of resignation and defeat, tied to a conflicted attitude toward someone she believes thinks that, deep down, this isn't a real relationship, that there's no emotional exchange on her part. The illusion of someone who refuses to see the truth with her own eyes, no matter that on the other side there's a fool, a woman in love with arms like an angel's, ready to embrace her once again. And yet it's not over: on Roan's side there's every interest in going on, all the strength of a love that struggles to wait to be called that, to stop hiding behind absurd denials.

It's a pain that the pre-chorus can barely contain, in which injustice, a sense of abandonment, the subtle and oppressive game of hypocrisy and moralism reach breaking point, before exploding into the chorus, letting the reality of things present itself in all its heartrending force. Still, it surfaces with elegance: in the songwriter's delivery there's a sense of acceptance toward a situation destined to end, not by her own will. And so, yes, good luck trying to feel with men what only one woman was able to make her feel. Good luck managing to ignore an undeniable feeling, inventing a thousand excuses: the world moves on, it doesn't stop for anyone, so you might as well stop denying yourself out of who knows what fear.

The second verse retraces the madness of an impossible love, of being a hopeless cliché; the perspective is flipped, the focus shifts to the self, to one's own needs, constantly left unmet. The anger builds, the strings grow sharper and more insistent, the decision has now been made, the goodbye is now final; with the second chorus the drive of the arrangement becomes more pronounced, the lightness of the opening now just a faint memory shattered to pieces.

It's in the bridge, however, that the song truly resolves into the gem it is, a black diamond charged with anguish: more a kind of prophecy than a spiteful attack, in just a few lines Roan sketches out the future of her lover, the unhappy wife of a man with whom she shares nothing, caught up in a charade she can no longer escape. The tension builds, riding the wave of every single word, before the truth arrives, armed with insistent "I told you so"s. The use of pauses is clever, the nervous energy of the sound smooths out into a hiss, before the final repetition explodes in a triumph of bitter inevitability. By the end of the track you can barely breathe, and the tape's own slowdown does nothing but crumple in on itself a story with no real winners, one that undoubtedly carries a bitter defeat.

It's surprising that, in an age of absolute self-identification and fragmented listening habits, a song so tied to an experience specific to the LGBTQ community managed to command such attention, forging its way with the force of an atypical message, reaching the American and British top ten, and from there, slowly, the entire world. In the end, though, it's in these possible moments of rupture, in these wild cards, that new paths reveal themselves. If the concurrent rediscovery and chart presence of older singles, as well as the belated success of the album, are any indication, it's that the world seems ready to embrace Chappell Roan, with her camp versatility and dazzling stage flair. "Good Luck, Babe!" has opened up a new path; here's hoping she can seize it to its full potential.

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22/04/2026