Chappell Roan’s Rocket-Ship Year
Update: 2024-10-21
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The pop star’s ascent has tested the boundaries of contemporary pop, and may create a template for a next generation. Guest: Teen Vogue's P. Claire Dodson.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything
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00:00:00
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Welcome to the New York Times podcast here.
00:00:36
I would never own a pair of fugly jeans, music news, and criticism.
00:00:41
I am your host, John Caramonica.
00:00:43
[Music]
00:00:57
So at the beginning there, we were listening to one of the good,
00:01:00
chapel early songs, not the early early songs, but an earlier song,
00:01:04
"My Kink is Karma", just a robust, wrestling song full of kiss-offs and
00:01:11
"Tisk Tisks", just a real bint through it, type of record.
00:01:16
It has been quite a year for chapel.
00:01:19
The rise involved Midwest Princess, which came out actually technically a year ago.
00:01:23
It seems to be peaking on the Billboard album chart right now.
00:01:26
She got about seven singles doing all different kinds of things on different platforms and charts.
00:01:32
Chapel Rooms is inescapable right now.
00:01:34
I, as y'all know, was only for much of the summer.
00:01:38
And then one of the first things I did when I came back as I got to go see Chapel Live
00:01:43
was going to go see her at a festival here in New York that she cancelled on.
00:01:47
Hedgecratch, but we're going to talk about it.
00:01:49
So then I flew the Tennessee to see one of the last dates of her tour this year.
00:01:54
I wanted to talk to someone who was tapped in to Chapel, not just today and yesterday,
00:01:58
but also all the way back in the in the hinterlands of mid-2023.
00:02:05
Life is so different now.
00:02:07
So we got Claire Dodson here.
00:02:09
Claire Dodson is the associate director for culture at Teen Vogue.
00:02:13
Claire's been on top of the chapel beat.
00:02:16
Let's get it.
00:02:17
How you doing?
00:02:18
I'm good.
00:02:20
Thanks so much for having me.
00:02:21
Diling in from "Conday Wi-Fi".
00:02:23
Yes.
00:02:25
Elite, this is a particularly elite if you're thinking the sound quality is extra good.
00:02:29
Now you know why.
00:02:31
You understand what's happening.
00:02:32
Okay, so there's a tremendous amount of area to cover with Chapel.
00:02:38
But I wonder before we talk about what's happening now.
00:02:41
Because I feel like it's almost too much what's happening now.
00:02:45
I wonder if we could go back to the very beginning, like the first record deal.
00:02:53
Like everything that was going on two to four years ago.
00:02:57
People tend to think when something like what happens to Chapel and what has happened to
00:03:02
Chapel in the last, let's say six months, they lack context for it.
00:03:07
But there is ample, ample context for it.
00:03:10
Do you want to talk us through a tiny bit of what was going on well before this recent
00:03:16
rocket ship took off?
00:03:18
She's definitely been working at this for many years, was signed.
00:03:23
I think she was still in high school and that record deal didn't go so well.
00:03:29
But she put out some great music and very early era, Chapel music.
00:03:34
And then you know, started working with Dan Nygroh of Olivia Rodrigo fame.
00:03:40
And they put out the Pink Pony Club, which is such a great song.
00:03:44
I love that song.
00:03:45
That was my Chapel introduction, was Pink Pony Club.
00:03:49
And I have to shout out my sister, show me that song.
00:03:51
And she takes full credit for my ensuing Chapel obsession for that.
00:03:56
She wants to go by line.
00:03:58
Exactly, yeah, I told her I told her I was doing this.
00:04:01
And she was like, well, you're welcome, I guess.
00:04:03
Cold, that's cold.
00:04:04
Yep, yeah.
00:04:05
So Chapel ended up getting dropped by the label by Atlantic and floundering,
00:04:12
moved back home to Missouri and then decided to take it like one last shot.
00:04:17
In LA ended up really working out since then she's, you know, only grown.
00:04:22
And one of the things that's interesting about Dan Nygroh, he has been,
00:04:28
obviously, you mentioned Olivia Rodrigo, like he has become a whisperer.
00:04:33
Someone who has made a certain generation of young female singer songwriters feel
00:04:39
comfortable accessing some truth and helping to shape it in a way that amplifies it.
00:04:45
And certainly something that has worked for Olivia.
00:04:48
And I'm actually really struck in the slot.
00:04:51
It's not a radical shift in sound to me, the later chapel stuff.
00:04:56
But there are these, I feel like small structural gestures where I'm like, okay,
00:05:00
I feel the build somewhat more cutely.
00:05:04
And that, that I think counts for a lot.
00:05:06
The thing that we can say for sure about Chappell's first go round, right?
00:05:11
You and I both know, well, there's untold numbers of people who are signed to record deals.
00:05:16
Like people who you see on TikTok with like 25,000 followers might have a,
00:05:20
might have a development deal.
00:05:21
You just don't know.
00:05:22
There's so many people in deals that are almost designed to go nowhere,
00:05:28
barring like an act of God.
00:05:30
Like something takes off on the internet or somebody goes,
00:05:33
unusually viral record labels place a lot of like small bets.
00:05:37
That's just how the business works.
00:05:39
Obviously you spend a lot of money on Drake,
00:05:41
but you also spend a little bit of money on 100 chapel rounds in hopes that something happens.
00:05:49
But in that first go round, it didn't, it didn't pop.
00:05:52
Do you think in the second go round,
00:05:56
when you hear the difference, the slight differences in the music,
00:05:59
but also the changes and the evolution of the subject matter,
00:06:03
I wonder what you think really is the thing that jumped out and allowed her to now become
00:06:09
what she's becoming right now?
00:06:10
It feels like the combination of a lot of things.
00:06:13
Like she herself is just more, was becoming more confident as a person and musician.
00:06:18
I think there's like the drag influence and how she really figured out visually,
00:06:22
how she wanted to present herself.
00:06:24
And then I feel like she and Dan make magic together.
00:06:28
So I think that relationship, the longer they've been friends,
00:06:31
I think the longer that has really paid off for them,
00:06:35
a part of it just feels like growing up and like figuring out,
00:06:39
okay, I have agency here to do this.
00:06:41
I want to sound this way and I'm going to stand by it,
00:06:43
instead of trying to chase like a trend like you do when you're younger.
00:06:47
I don't mean this is sound on generous anyway,
00:06:48
but it's like there's a little bit of value and failure and not getting it right.
00:06:52
And then people contend with failure in all different kinds of ways.
00:06:56
And I think it seems like chapel took that first pass and it didn't go.
00:07:02
And rather than like endlessly thrashing herself about,
00:07:04
oh, I didn't get going.
00:07:05
Just said, well, okay, what can I, how can I evolve?
00:07:08
This is actually an opportunity.
00:07:09
There's an opportunity hiding inside of this.
00:07:12
So tell me, let's talk a little bit about some of what she chose to lean into
00:07:16
for the sort of 2.0 phase of her music.
00:07:20
Let's talk a little bit about, like you mentioned,
00:07:22
her explorations with drag and character work and becoming something in public.
00:07:28
That was different than Kaylee, right?
00:07:31
Like sort of creating, creating an outside character.
00:07:34
Also, the subject matter of the song is becoming much more emotionally frank,
00:07:40
much more sexually frank, talking about queer love,
00:07:43
like all this stuff really coming to the center of the work.
00:07:48
I wonder if you can talk a little bit about those decisions,
00:07:50
how they played out for her.
00:07:52
And also how they were also tied into larger themes that were happening in pop
00:07:57
over the last three or four years.
00:07:59
Because it also seems to be incredibly well tied with bigger things that are happening,
00:08:04
not just with her.
00:08:05
So I interviewed her for Teen Vogue in March of 2023.
00:08:09
And we talked a lot a bit, or a lot about where I'm from Tennessee.
00:08:13
We both grew up very in religious spaces with conservative people around.
00:08:18
And so thinking about sex and sexuality was always tinge with a lot of shame
00:08:23
and weirdness and just felt, didn't feel like right.
00:08:28
And so I remember her talking about even that spring still actively working through that.
00:08:34
And not feeling totally comfortable with those things.
00:08:37
Painting that separation of chapel is this confident, outgoing character
00:08:42
who can talk about sex and wield that power and really funny and sharp ways.
00:08:47
And how Kaylee is still very much uncomfortable with that,
00:08:50
like did not want to be like flirted with either by fans or like generally.
00:08:55
So that seems on a personal level for her.
00:08:58
That's something she has been working through.
00:09:00
And just as you could older, you learn how to contextualize stuff.
00:09:03
You go to therapy.
00:09:04
She's talked about that.
00:09:05
Like you just like you figure out ways to like think about these things.
00:09:09
Stay in therapy for a very long time.
00:09:11
Highly recommended for anybody out there.
00:09:13
Highly recommended.
00:09:14
Same exactly. And then to your point about the larger pop ecosystem.
00:09:20
I think things have been so like sad bedroom pop for a couple of years.
00:09:27
Like I think about like lots of artists who got their big start in 2020.
00:09:32
Like there was just a lot of melancholy to that.
00:09:36
And even in the years preceding that.
00:09:38
And she comes in as this whatever cliche, but like breath of fresh air.
00:09:43
Like doing some of the 80s stuff that's been popular for years.
00:09:47
Of course, like building on that sound.
00:09:49
But doing it in a really fun like Cindy Lauper.
00:09:52
Exciting way.
00:09:53
Makes her stand out.
00:09:54
In preparing to write about her a couple weeks ago.
00:09:58
I went back and tried to listen to the music
00:10:01
as unconnected from any of the kind of meta narrative as possible.
00:10:05
Just really trying to understand the music works.
00:10:08
And I was very struck by in many ways how straight forward the references were.
00:10:15
Like how deeply connected to the kind of like loud pop female hits of the early,
00:10:23
well, more than mid 1980s.
00:10:25
The challenge in so much as there's a challenge or a twist, it's subject matter.
00:10:30
It's the fact that she's actually like an excellent singer and finding ways
00:10:35
to communicate that without beating you around the head without just singing at you constantly.
00:10:40
Like finding playful ways to communicate expertise vocally.
00:10:44
She's very, very, very good at that.
00:10:46
But the music itself is actually fairly straight forward.
00:10:49
And I am always reminded of the fact that so much evolution in pop is not hard radicalism.
00:10:57
It's sort of like sneaking something in with the candy, right?
00:11:01
It's here's a sound you're familiar with.
00:11:03
Here's a structure that you understand.
00:11:04
Here's something you probably heard before, ambiently in the radio on the radio at the restaurant
00:11:10
and supermarket, whatever, but here's a new approach to it.
00:11:13
Here's something else on top of it.
00:11:15
And I think she's done such an exceptional job of communicating a very clear value set
00:11:21
and a very clear talent set on top of like a platter that almost everybody we know would be like,
00:11:28
oh, I understand that plot like I get that.
00:11:30
And then by the time you've gotten it, you're like, oh, no, it's actually totally different.
00:11:33
That's so true.
00:11:34
And I think that's where not to attribute to any one person,
00:11:39
but I think like her and dance musical relationship is so productive there.
00:11:44
Because I think he plays around with sounds that are older.
00:11:47
He talked about, I talked to him for a fast company story a couple of months ago.
00:11:51
And he was talking about how like they wanted to take the guitar out of pink pony club,
00:11:55
like his old label.
00:11:57
There's just lots of like little musical things that he's adding in,
00:12:00
that they're adding in together that are like surprising.
00:12:03
Like the slowdown on Good Luck Bay, like that kind of thing.
00:12:06
I was actually thinking we should listen to Pink Pony Club because I feel like we've
00:12:09
talked about it a couple of times and that really is the transition song.
00:12:12
So let's listen to them.
00:12:14
♪ Pink Pony Club, I'm gonna keep on dancing at the pink Pony Club ♪
00:12:21
♪ I'm gonna keep on dancing down in the west, Hollywood ♪
00:12:25
♪ I'm gonna keep on dancing at the pink Pony Club, pink Pony Club ♪
00:12:32
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00:12:39
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00:12:42
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00:12:45
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00:12:50
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00:12:54
What I keep encountering is that voters don't fall into neat ideological boxes
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00:13:29
So you spoke to Chapel early last year.
00:13:37
What was happening around that time?
00:13:39
Why did you feel like that was the moment to really check in?
00:13:41
It was time to the release of the casual music video, the second one, the siren,
00:13:47
kind of ethereal mermaid, aquamarine, but gave via music video.
00:13:53
And I felt one, I think that was the first, maybe the first new thing
00:13:58
that I, it just aligned professionally, I guess, since I'd become a fan and like late.
00:14:04
I became a fan in mid 2022. It was good timing for that.
00:14:09
And then I think casual has gone on to be such an interesting song because it's not, it's fun,
00:14:14
but it's maybe not overly sad. It's like, it's ultimately about a very screwed-up,
00:14:19
you know, situation chip vibe. I think it's a nice compliment.
00:14:22
Deeply traumatic song. It's honestly still one of my two or three favorites,
00:14:29
but it is like definitely not fun.
00:14:30
Any in live, it's also like people are like psyched and I'm like, this is not a happy song.
00:14:35
I was like, I understand we're all happy to be here, but like we got, let her cook on this,
00:14:40
give it a little breathing space. Yes, no, that's so true.
00:14:43
I remember thinking about casual quite a bit when it came out, very struck by the way that she writes,
00:14:50
spoken lyrics, like some lyrics are like, I'm floored in poetic, but some lyrics are very much like,
00:14:57
this is how I would speak, or this is something I said or would say or whatever.
00:15:00
I was really struck by how sophisticated her spoken lyric writing was.
00:15:08
Because often I find when songwriters are like including talking, or it's either
00:15:14
weaving in and out of narrative and voice, there's something that feels slightly off or contrived
00:15:21
about the voice part, about the speaking part, because obviously when you speak to another person,
00:15:26
you're not speaking in melodic line, but she wrote spoken hooks and lyrics that sounded
00:15:36
absolutely just perfectly in the bed of the group, like just really, really sophisticated.
00:15:43
And I just, I don't hear metal on. I was very struck by it. I wonder what casual
00:15:49
represented to you as you took it in. Because like you said, the idea is she had a couple of other
00:15:54
songs that in that sort of 2.0 era, casual wasn't necessarily the first one that came out if I'm not
00:15:59
mistaken. I think maybe other songs came out before, but casual to at least help kind of like break
00:16:04
things up for the next phase. What jump down about to you? I think feminine nominon had come out before,
00:16:11
and I love that song. That's probably my favorite chapel song, so just for the record. But I think
00:16:15
casual is interesting because like the the word, it does have a sort of internet-y or like modern
00:16:21
connotation, like being casual with someone. It's a word that's dirt around a lot. We're talking a lot
00:16:26
about it when you're hooking up with someone. It's not serious. There are ways other artists play
00:16:31
with modern vernacular in a way that I think can be cheesy. If you're trying to force an internet
00:16:37
speak thing where I feel like casual is an internet-y word, but the way she uses it, it sounds very like,
00:16:43
it's just real. She's just like, she's literally plaintive about it. It doesn't feel overly contrived.
00:16:48
I feel like somebody orders to make songs to become meme. They're sort of like, oh, here's a saying,
00:16:56
if I can just make the song, then intersects with the saying, at mass awareness, my song will become
00:17:03
the stand-in and a million people will make videos with it on TikTok. And this does not feel like that
00:17:08
at all. If anything, it captures a kind of beleagueredness of a certain kind of internet-decimated
00:17:18
emotional connection. It captures that beleagueredness and puts it into a song, which again,
00:17:24
incredibly, incredibly well done. Let's listen to some of casual and catch your, catch your queen next
00:17:29
out. So, casual helps, to me, it feels like a little bit of a true icebreaker. She's like, out in
00:17:51
the wild, ice all around her, and then the boat's just like, nope, we're getting back to the ocean. We're
00:17:55
getting back. What are some of the things that happen from casual up through this summer before
00:18:03
Lala? We'll get to Lala. But what are some of the sort of touch points that happen in between those
00:18:06
two things where you kind of looking and say, okay, it's in motion now. Like, it's something broke,
00:18:13
something succeeded. What are those things? I think the tour that she went on last year was pretty
00:18:20
crucial and on it. I just feel like she cemented this sense of purity in the fan base as much as
00:18:27
there can be. It felt like we were all seeing her at Webster Hall a year or two almost years ago.
00:18:32
We're all here experiencing something. It's kind of word of mouth. She didn't have a huge TikTok
00:18:38
or social media presence. It didn't feel polluted by the algorithm. It was just a bunch of people in a
00:18:44
room who really loved Chapel Road and doing that tour so much and creating that really close sense
00:18:52
of community every show for a year, testing out new songs. She played hot to go at that Webster Hall
00:18:59
Show and it was iconic, teaching us the moves. It was just great to think about now that she does that
00:19:05
for tens of thousands of people at festivals. I feel like the touring was really crucial. It gave her
00:19:12
even more of that confidence, sense of presence, just practice, like Ornisha's get better when they
00:19:17
can tour, especially doing like kind of club level shows, a little bit bigger than club shows.
00:19:21
Then the album came out in fall. It's been a year since that album came out, but I think after that
00:19:32
it was then like the succession of Coachella, not that well. Like I guess what, six months later,
00:19:39
that's Coachella's sort of the point at which it all shifted, I feel. And then there was like the
00:19:44
tiny desk concert around the same time. And so that showed off some of her more technical prowess and
00:19:51
the smeared lipstick on her teeth. I feel like it was like an image that people were kind of like,
00:19:56
"Should I be disturbed by this or do I love it?" So just like all these things like started working
00:20:02
in tandem. And they stuck with the album. I think albums should be allowed to breathe for a year.
00:20:08
It's really nice to see something grow. Because if I mean, if I'm not mistaken, when the album came out,
00:20:13
I don't even know if it ended up on the hot two on the billboard chart at all. And it's just been a
00:20:19
slow burn. And then obviously a takeoff in the last few months. What did you learn being at those
00:20:24
early shows, like seeing that crowd and seeing the crowd grow? What do we know about Jappelrone fans?
00:20:31
Because by the time I got to see it live, obviously it's everyone, right? It's seeing kids. It's
00:20:38
normies. It's queer kids dressed up exactly like Jappelrone. And then it's like a bunch of 35-year-old
00:20:44
randos who are just like, "I hear this is like what's playing." So it's a big tent right now. But it
00:20:50
wasn't always a big tent. What do we know about the kind of 1.0 in early phase Jappel fans that
00:20:56
really I think are still there and have not left the party. It was a lot of, I would say more 20
00:21:02
some things than teens perhaps, but not to discount the presence of teens in the fandom, which are very
00:21:08
crucial. On podcasts, we honor all teams. And certainly we honor teens far more than anyone who's
00:21:14
my age. Candidly, if you're my age, you're cooked. I'm sorry. Respectfully, you're cooked. Just,
00:21:20
just let the teens, let the kids have it. It's fine. You can learn a lot. She's done this at shows,
00:21:25
which she'll have like the themes for the night. So whether it's like a, I think my, the one I went to
00:21:29
was like a sleepover or like doing like a pink pony club theme. So that could create it. The essence
00:21:35
of everyone wearing the same thing anyway. Like now people are doing that. But that was basically
00:21:40
prescripted. Like the, the cowboy, the cowgirl hats, the kind of western gear and pink. All that was
00:21:48
happening at those shows because she like asked people to. So it did, it helped to create even more
00:21:53
the smooth of we're all here loving this artist that you have to tell people how to pronounce her name.
00:21:58
I actually didn't know that that she was sort of like setting like rules for the ball as it were
00:22:04
of that. And that's a fascinating way to guarantee dedication in your, you know, because you kind
00:22:12
of really know who's there intensely who's like showing up for real. If you see some people
00:22:18
in the back that didn't play the role, they're like, okay, well, maybe you're never going to stick
00:22:21
around, but the other 500 of you or a thousand of you, you're really here. Like what a smart way to
00:22:27
develop devotion. And I, some people are very natural marketers is what I'll say. I don't say that
00:22:34
cynically. I know it's sound cynical, but some people just are. And that's also, I imagine for her,
00:22:40
probably a way of feeling embraced and say like, you know, here, here I am. I didn't work out
00:22:48
last time. Hope it works out this time. Like how can I know? Totally. I think like I remember this quote
00:22:54
that she had said last year that was that she was like, this career is like exactly what I wanted.
00:23:00
Like I imagined it in my head this way. And obviously that was March of 2023. So maybe things have
00:23:06
shifted on that front, but it's I think a lot of it. She just is really intentional about every single
00:23:12
thing that she was doing and the lead up to all of this. The last song I want to play from the album
00:23:17
before we get in some of the bigger recent chapel stuff is obviously mentioned how to go.
00:23:21
We all know how to do it. So let's listen to a little bit of how to go and you guys can do the dance at home.
00:23:44
So again, here a a a song that would not have been out of place in 1983 or 1984 structurally.
00:23:54
And somehow feels invested with a with a whole bunch of newness and a whole bunch of of fresh
00:24:01
attitudes. And also, and this is something I talked about a little bit in the piece that it implicitly
00:24:07
acknowledges that unlike the 80s, one of the greatest errors for pop music ever, where radio is the
00:24:14
primary delivery service. Right now TikTok is the primary delivery service. So it's basically like,
00:24:19
how do we make a great song that we feel good about as a whole, but also can speak and be dismantled
00:24:25
and sort of like attract people in other less linear ways. It seems to try to do both of those
00:24:31
things at once. I don't know if that's what the goal was. But to me, that's why this song is so effective.
00:24:36
It works as a whole. It also happens to work in pieces. I wonder what you're and also as a dance,
00:24:43
which helps as well for cross cultural absorption and so and so forth. Tell me a little bit about
00:24:49
how to go in your mind. What do you think it achieves? I think she said like she was inspired by
00:24:56
watching people do radio Gaga. So I think there is like that that piece of of older references and
00:25:02
like just imagining the like the cheerleader aspect. I feel like it hits all of these to your
00:25:09
beloved word meta narrative. It hits all of these like points about like her queerness as cheerleaders
00:25:16
as but I'm a cheerleader, the tie-in of all of these aspects of her identity with the thing she's
00:25:21
doing musically. All feels connected to me and it's really fun. It's great to do a dance. People can
00:25:27
do, doesn't feel difficult as we learned from like the the apple dance. It's nice when the dances are
00:25:33
easy. One of my main quarrels with the apple dance is I feel like there's one extra, there's one
00:25:39
too many things in the middle like when you're going from the top to the bottom diagonally. I'm just like
00:25:45
the here's a hiccup in here. There's a hiccup here and like why won't someone like why won't the
00:25:51
original I don't know who originally choreographed it but I would just love like a mild revision because
00:25:57
I just feel like every time I've tried to do it. I'm just like no there's we can smooth that
00:26:01
anyway sorry just a dance note we'll take that up with our dance critic at some point.
00:26:05
Hey I'm Tracy Mumford. You can join me every weekday morning for the headlines from the New
00:26:10
York Times. Now we're about to see a spectacle that we've never seen before to show that catches you
00:26:15
up on the biggest news stories of the day. I'm hearing what square put you on the ground where news
00:26:20
is unfolding. I just got back from a trip out to the front line and every soldier and bring you
00:26:24
the analysis and expertise you can only get from the Times newsroom. I just can't emphasize enough
00:26:29
how extraordinary this moment is. Look for the headlines wherever you get your podcasts.
00:26:35
Chapples had quite a run these six months. Look in short Coachella huge very very big one very
00:26:45
live stream when crazy. Lowell Pulusa huge. I don't know if there was live stream but I do know
00:26:52
the crowd photos when crazy. It was one of those things where the photo became the thing from the show.
00:26:57
And one of the things that's been happening is chapel has been facing in real time what it means
00:27:06
to set boundaries as a famous person. That's not something that we're often privy to or have
00:27:12
access to as observers or critics or journalists. But chapel is very fourth wall breaking, right?
00:27:20
So I'm just going to talk about this. I'm going to go on tick talk and talk about it. I'm going to
00:27:24
yell at the guy on the VMAs red carpet. I'm just going to do it in public. So we have uncommon
00:27:30
visibility into this thing, right? And I wonder how that has struck you as a long time observer
00:27:38
because one thing that I know from many many years of writing about aspiring famous people and
00:27:47
actual things people is that very rarely do the aspirants actually understand what fame really is.
00:27:55
They don't understand it as labor. They don't understand it as like emotional pressure. Like they
00:28:01
don't understand how like just candidly how hard it is at that level. And when you see chapel going
00:28:10
through this in like incredibly compressed time frame, right? I feel like she's the first person
00:28:16
to be like, you damn this sucks. And also I'm going to talk about it rather than most people who are
00:28:23
like damn this sucks, but stiff upper lip. I'm just I guess this is just what it is, right? So what do
00:28:30
you think? What do you think allows her to treat it differently than other people who have undoubtedly
00:28:38
had similar feelings at some point? I feel like it definitely helps that she had been working
00:28:44
on the music side for years leading into this. And that this is all happening when she's she's
00:28:51
well like 26. I should know that, but just like mid 20s mid 20s she knows more or less who she is
00:28:58
at this point. Like obviously you're still evolving as a person forever, but she's not like 16
00:29:03
going through this. So she has like more of that. I can speak to things that do not feel right.
00:29:08
She doesn't have to take it. She doesn't like for less the whole thing fall apart basically.
00:29:13
Totally because I definitely I've talked to people who have broken at that age as I know you have it
00:29:19
is it is very it's sad sometimes to see the way they talk about just that innocence to experience
00:29:25
like fame break and like how they feel they have to tiptoe around it because they're too they don't
00:29:31
feel like they can they really have the power to say anything which they don't sometimes there's
00:29:36
so many stakeholders in a music career that you have to think about. I think historically speaking
00:29:41
out against the conditions of fame have been understood as a rejection of fame not as a opportunity
00:29:49
to open a conversation about recalibrating what fame actually means, right? And I think about this
00:29:55
a lot with like obviously Drake over the years has been so effective in absorbing both online
00:30:03
adoration and online hate and understanding that they're both equally valuable to the construction
00:30:08
of fame. Now he's not a person who pushes back, but he understands that fame is not what it was 20
00:30:14
years ago when it was just unit directional online stan universes are messy. They're forever evolving
00:30:23
people fall in and they fall out. And I think the most artful contemporary pop stars find ways
00:30:30
to play with the evolution of online fandom and be a part of it from a distance. What chapel seems
00:30:39
to be saying is I acknowledge that people are like coming in and out and coming in and out, but
00:30:43
I am not. I'm like that y'all can do that, but but keep in mind that I'm still me and that's
00:30:52
something that I imagine other people who are that famous feel, but don't say. And her sort of saying
00:30:59
really the thing that you're doing as a fan and oh, I said something incorrectly in a live stream
00:31:05
or I didn't word something perfectly. Suck it up like I'm a real person. If your appreciation for
00:31:13
what I do can be derailed by something like that, then it's okay. You can like you can go. You don't
00:31:20
like I it's too much for me to bear. One of the things that I think we've always thought about big 10
00:31:25
pop stars, especially the 80s and 90s is that they accommodate all different kinds of approaches
00:31:31
to fandom and chapel seems to be the first one. Oh, though except maybe Dogega, which is a whole
00:31:36
separate conversation. But the first one to basically be like, you know what? It's fine. I'm figuring
00:31:40
myself out. You want to stick around for that. Happy to have you. If I'm causing you some kind of
00:31:45
agita peace and blessings, right? That seems and that seems unusual to me. Maybe I'm maybe I'm missing
00:31:54
the lineage of that, but it seems unusual to me. It's the rare thing that shocks me in 2024.
00:32:00
I definitely think it is. And I think it probably speaks to like a ways that young people generally
00:32:07
just feel like empowered, more empowered online, more just able to say this is not right. And it's
00:32:12
not just me. It's like the system that we're living and working in. And I interviewed all these fans
00:32:19
at all things go a few weeks ago and talked to them about all of this. And they just kept they kept
00:32:24
drawing these lines to like Britney and Taylor Swift and Lee Gaga, all these other big pop stars
00:32:32
who have dealt with this and like they speaking specifically about Britney, like people people would
00:32:38
say things like we want Chappell to be around for a long time. Like we want her to thrive and build
00:32:43
this career that's very long. And just the fact that they were drawing those connections to people
00:32:48
who have really struggled and you know, want to see their pop favorite pop stars make music for a long
00:32:54
time. I hope I hope Britney also makes music for a long time. And I think that's a great thread to
00:33:00
draw because I think we've been so acclimated in centrist pop, you know, mainstream pop of having
00:33:08
pop stars who are heroic, titanic, unapproachable figures. And whose humanity is tertiary at best,
00:33:18
a concern. And obviously you've seen the, we've seen the collapse of that with Britney, you see it
00:33:23
much more measured and controlled, but somehow equally weird way with Justin Timberlake. You see
00:33:29
with Justin Bieber's, he's struggles to continue to make art and live like a relatively normal life.
00:33:36
These are the, those are the wages of that era of pop music and Chappell is basically being like
00:33:42
not it, not it, not gonna do it. Absolutely not gonna do it. But I think you're right in that it is,
00:33:50
it does reflect a kind of new iteration because I think online fan build, like fan aggregation and
00:34:00
stand culture for so long has felt like that's the only way to become popular. And remain popular is
00:34:08
like keep keep the beehive buzzing, keep the Swifties tweeting and Tumblring, right? And Chappell is
00:34:14
basically the first, I just don't, it's not worth it. My men's office is just genuinely not worth it.
00:34:19
And she's also arriving at a moment where we're reconsidering how the pop stars of the 2000s were
00:34:25
treated and earlier conversations about mental health are like far more normalized, right? You went to
00:34:32
that festival. So talk a little bit about the festival. It's called All Things Go. It was two days,
00:34:36
one in New York, one in Maryland. So it's a festival, essentially women and queer focused festival.
00:34:44
But as you point out in your piece, and I was, as I said, I was gonna go to that festival and then
00:34:48
also go to a show in the South to just kind of like get a vibe of what it was going to be like in
00:34:51
two different settings. But then she canceled the festival citing pressures and need to take a
00:34:57
little bit of time for herself. Great. Love it. Tell me a little bit about what you saw in the young
00:35:04
people who were there. Obviously you wrote quite extensively about this. But if you can encapsulate
00:35:09
what those people were looking for in Chappell and maybe even did they find it in Chappell by her
00:35:17
not showing up and like taking a load of space for herself was that in its own way sort of a positive
00:35:23
thing for the fans, even if they couldn't see her before. I definitely think it was and it's so
00:35:30
interesting like I planned to do this story before she dropped out like just talking to Chappell fans
00:35:35
about like fan culture and how that is involved online and off. And then when she dropped out,
00:35:40
I was like, okay, well, this is a great peg for the piece. And now it's going to be on everyone's
00:35:45
minds and I went to the New York festival. Everyone showed up on Saturday as if they were seeing Chappell
00:35:51
Road anyway, which was fun. It made my job easy because I could just go up to the people wearing
00:35:55
Chappell Road gear. But just everyone I spoke to was very like moved by it and didn't feel like there
00:36:02
was some like frustration. Of course, some just like disappointment. But most of it was very much like
00:36:07
she needs to protect her mental health. Like she knows what she needs to do to make this career
00:36:13
a long one. Like she should feel free to take that time. And just everyone had just like a very nuanced
00:36:20
understanding of what kind of pressure people are under. And I think that's because the average person
00:36:28
also has a good understanding of like the pressure that we're under online. I talked to some people
00:36:36
for an upcoming story and we talked about just fame and like downsides of all the negative attention
00:36:41
and we talked about the girl who did the apple dance was shown as a sweat tour. Yeah. So during that
00:36:48
showing another person like jumped in to do the dance, whatever. And that person received a lot of
00:36:53
backlash online. And it made me think about times five experienced backlash. I'm sure you have
00:36:58
as well online. Like the fandoms will come for you. But even just a regular person can find
00:37:03
themselves receiving like thousands of hateful comments. And so I think there was some element of
00:37:09
that understanding with the people I talked to, which were mostly women on binary to queer people.
00:37:15
Like just do that. They know what it's like to be under the symmetric scope too, because we're all
00:37:20
under this like big shoe that's trying to crush us. So basically the sympathy that the fans were
00:37:27
able to extend chapel. It was very much rooted in their own personal experiences of online
00:37:34
maelstrom slash the internet's not actually a safe space really for most people. Yes. And the
00:37:40
teenagers I talked to which there were several would also talked about like how much mental health
00:37:46
had been stressed them in school and had been like taught that they need to take care of themselves
00:37:52
in this way. So I think that's also a shift that there is just so much like at a young age you're
00:37:56
you're being taught that you should keep an eye on stuff and talk to people when you feel upset
00:38:00
and just like check it with yourself. So I think there is some of like larger cultural evolution I
00:38:06
guess and how people act. No one really talked about it in my generation. And honestly if an artist
00:38:12
had abruptly canceled a few shows and cited exhaustion like cited. It always felt much more sinister.
00:38:22
You'd be like, Oh, that's masking something much worse. And also like people like we reject that.
00:38:27
That's no. It's not your job is to be out. Go dance. Go sing. That's that's their job.
00:38:32
What I'm hopeful for in terms of what chapels name will achieve. I think about this both
00:38:42
as a star, but also as a musician. This is something we talked about on pop gas earlier in the year.
00:38:48
This kind of the evolution of kind of like a a pop star with rougher edges, a less polished pop star.
00:38:56
I saw Sabrina maybe a couple days after I saw a chapel. And obviously they both had a rise
00:39:02
same time. And I think part of part of their rise, they're they're very some particle artists,
00:39:07
even though they're very different. Sabrina very, very head. Edora. Extremely extreme. But to the point
00:39:15
of parody like she's playing she's playing with that with that old iconography of 1950s spin up
00:39:21
and finding ways to make it feel modern and funny and not retro so much as remade. I was surprised
00:39:30
to actually how much similarity there were there was between chapels performance and her music
00:39:35
and Sabrina's performance for music. But I think one thing that they both really have done
00:39:40
interestingly is say I will show you where the rupture is. I will deliver you something that
00:39:47
sounds a little bit like something that I am then going to point very pointedly at the rupture.
00:39:53
And the rupture might be a musical thing. It might be a lyrical thing. It also might be something
00:39:58
that I do on TikTok or how I talk in between songs or whatever calling attention to the rupture.
00:40:03
And that's just not something in the era in in eras tour era. It's just not something that people do
00:40:11
that much certainly not at that level of of of pop fame. I love talking about Sabrina and
00:40:16
chapel together because I've also been a fan of Sabrina's for several years. So it's been a really
00:40:21
it's been a really big year for me personally as a fan and everyone in my life is like tired of
00:40:26
hearing me talk about these two two not me not pop guys was there. But I think that point exactly
00:40:34
like I saw Sabrina at MSG and the the little like which he's sitting in the conversation pit
00:40:42
and had like a line about did you hear I indicted the mayor and it was just like this fun moment
00:40:49
of like yeah she's not saying that at every show obviously especially with I think about the
00:40:53
eras tour which I've seen several times and like a big Taylor fan it's we've seen it so much
00:41:00
on TikTok like I've watched the grainy live streams and everyone else we've just seen it so many times
00:41:04
we've watched the the Disney documentary whatever like it's just and that's not a bad thing I
00:41:10
think that's a great but it also just means we have seen the same show like the average person has
00:41:16
been exposed to it a lot so it's nice to have just reminders that things can be off the cuff
00:41:22
and she can't Taylor can't be off the cuff in a show of that size without any things going on.
00:41:27
And this is really a question for fans it's what are you there for are you there to receive
00:41:33
a carbon copied version of a thing that you know you've seen before or that you have come to expect
00:41:40
or you there because you feel some connection to the creative output of an individual and that might
00:41:47
not look or sound exactly like what you thought it would or how it was presented to you or how they
00:41:55
did it the night before or the week before right and and I'm not saying one kind of fandom is like
00:42:00
more durable than the other but it is interesting that the nature of fandom seems to be can you make
00:42:08
allowances for things that are a little off things that are a little different things that might not
00:42:14
be super crisp cornered that maybe is what the next generation of fans that's what they're
00:42:21
signing up for that's how it seems to me agreed and and I think a lot of fans want that that's why
00:42:28
they're I get so many tiktoks that are like the errors tour and it's like all these like little
00:42:34
little mistakes shall make not even stuff she's really doing wrong but just like little things like
00:42:39
her hair being frizzy or whatever it's like people people want to know that she's like a real person
00:42:43
and I think people do crave some amount of spontaneity or like you go to a show and you're like I want
00:42:50
to imagine that we are having this connection that everyone understands because we're here together
00:42:55
but it's also singular it's it's my own it's personal but it's part of a larger thing as well and
00:43:02
I think that also gets people into like tricky territory where they you want to be you want to scream
00:43:08
so loud that she'll hear you you want to make tiktoks of yourself singing something instead of
00:43:15
the artist or like you just you want to be centered in that and I think there are maybe healthier
00:43:20
ways for people to exercise that desire than they do yeah we can talk for hours and days and weeks
00:43:27
about main characters syndrome on the internet and and certainly how like using the tailor or the
00:43:34
chapel concert as like the backdrop for your life not and again it's maybe it is the backdrop for
00:43:38
your life there's no judgment like I think it's probably healthier if it's more the backdrop for your
00:43:43
life than the raise on debt of your life but what that does do and you've seen this a lot in the
00:43:49
chapel politics stuff that happened a couple weeks ago is you begin to feel like
00:43:56
why isn't this person exactly like why are they what I wish them to be a little bit this way
00:44:03
and then if she's not then it really tests the boundaries of am I just gonna let chapel be chapel
00:44:08
and I I'm writing for chapel or does my fandom have an outer boundary and I think that that's
00:44:15
an interesting pressure point that you never really see with Taylor you don't really see it with
00:44:20
Beyonce but you are seeing it at least in real time maybe you're seeing it over time with Taylor
00:44:26
Beyonce many many many years but everything with chapel been compressed so crazy you're seeing people
00:44:32
like dive in wholeheartedly and be like I'm here I'm here I'm here and then it's oh I don't like how
00:44:36
she phrased such and such about Kamala and it's oh I'm gone and that seems strange to me also like
00:44:43
why are you worried about the chapel wrote worry about yourself worry about your family don't
00:44:47
what are you doing but it's interesting because you're also those fans are never are never really
00:44:53
being given the chance to stick around for years and years and years they're just cycling in and out
00:44:58
and it does make me wonder it from chapel side how unstable does that actually feel and that's
00:45:05
part of what I was hoping to write about in that piece it's like online you have people who are like
00:45:10
churning in and out they're like I'm here I'm here I'll know no you said that and I gotta go
00:45:14
so unstable but at least you look out in the crowd you're like okay 10,000 people here 30,000 people
00:45:20
there 90,000 okay y'all get it y'all are good I wonder what are your thoughts on the kind of distinction
00:45:25
between what's what she's experiencing on the internet versus like how things have been playing out
00:45:31
in the real world it must be tough when it's like the touring seems to be what what connects her with
00:45:36
her audience it's what like she can enact this like dream world that she loves but it's also the
00:45:41
thing that's contributing to your exhaustion tiredness it's tough to do all of that so imagine that
00:45:46
must be tough I think like the online and off was what I was really interested in exploring in my
00:45:52
piece and I was listening to I think Britney Spana's on a recent Rolling Stone podcast was talking
00:45:59
she was talking about like how chapel's original complaint was actually with what was happening offline
00:46:05
not online and it was the breaking boundaries in public it was like coming up to her touching like
00:46:12
now we know like she was like kissed by a fan which is obviously very bad and just people
00:46:18
getting out of control in person whereas I think the online stuff can be maybe easier to ignore
00:46:24
if you choose to that's weird everyone I guess I talked to it all things goes very much like
00:46:30
online is bad here is way better like they loved the community of the concert they're like I wish
00:46:36
we could all just be like chapel-run fans in this physical space and not think about the other stuff too
00:46:41
much and I think I think she has like an exciting fan base of people who are committed and she's
00:46:50
addressed them in these TikToks where she'll be like if you really know me if you've seen me for years
00:46:55
if you know what I talk about what I care about you'll understand what I'm saying and it's
00:47:00
it does feel like it's like bad faith people online or like those people who are churning in and how
00:47:05
like all of that is not like necessarily relevant to her or her project as it were
00:47:13
being conversed about is a great thing if you are a person who needs attention or wants attention
00:47:19
or wishes to grow like that's great I'm sure it's incredibly unpleasant but it does indicate
00:47:24
that you're like striking a nerve what I would say is to the people who are churning in and out
00:47:29
if your first instinct is to churn out stick around maybe you'll learn something new maybe you'll
00:47:33
be tested or pushed or learn learn a different approach and number two don't put all your
00:47:39
moral responsibilities in the hands of the pop star just don't do that just don't do that just
00:47:43
find your own moral path don't worry about what if what a famous person's doing it's not gonna
00:47:47
knock it out yeah affectionate no agree to you I've thought about that a lot over the past year
00:47:52
Claire I appreciate you coming and chatting about chapel obviously my instinct is to close out
00:47:59
with good luck babe which when I heard it I've heard it multiple times obviously when I heard it at
00:48:05
the show specifically I was like damn we're gonna be hearing this song for 50 years this song is not
00:48:15
going anywhere really the right level of theatrical like just a touch pass comfort which I think is
00:48:24
probably a good thing really well written obviously I feel like every chapel song now replaces the
00:48:30
prior chapel song where you're like that's the one and then another looks like actually it's
00:48:35
that one but this really does feel like the one that's going to stick around for a long time so
00:48:40
let's go out with good luck babe our producer as always just Pedro Azado from @separmedia every
00:48:46
episode of popcasts in ytimes.com's live popcast except that we are paywalled now
00:48:53
so if you go to nytimes.com/podcasts floral I believe you can subscribe to the nyt audio project
00:49:03
$6 a month $50 a year you get full access to the archives you can do through apple you can do
00:49:09
through Spotify and if you listen to popcasts in some other way I believe the episodes are still
00:49:15
there link link we'll be back next week good luck babe
00:49:44
(upbeat music)
