Chappell Roan on Her Love of Drag Queens and Her Debut Album That 'Feels Like a Party' (Exclusive)

The inspiration behind the title of Chappell Roan's debut album came from her own tramp stamp. 

"I have a tramp stamp that says princess and ‘Midwest princess,’ me being from the Midwest, it just made sense," she giggles over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. 

On her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which was released Sept. 22 via Amusement/Island Records, Roan plays with the dichotomy of a "small town girl [who] goes to a big city," grappling with the reality that the spotlight isn't quite as alluring as she once envisioned. 

Roan, 25, knows that emotional rollercoaster well.

Born Kayleigh Amstutz (her stage name pays homage to her late grandfather) the singer-songwriter grew up in a Christian conservative household in Willard, Missouri. While she began playing piano in her youth, she realized she wanted to be a performer at 13 when she auditioned for a talent show.

But it was when Roan started uploading covers of songs to YouTube in her early teens that she began getting noticed by record labels. After sharing the haunting anthem “Die Young” online, she landed her first major record label signing with Atlantic Records in 2017. That year she also shared her vulnerable debut EP School Nights and earned opening slots with Vance Joy and Declan McKenna.  

However, she was still discovering her sound. By 2020, Roan seemed to be tapping more into her authenticity as an artist when she began working with Dan Nigro, the songwriter and producer who would earn acclaim for his work with Olivia Rodrigo on her breakout LP Sour. Together, they worked on the campy, synth-pop number “Pink Pony Club” which she released in April of that year, allowing the singer-songwriter to unabashedly embrace her queer awakening and pay homage to drag culture. 

But Roan was dropped by Atlantic Records. “I lost all my money and had to move home,” she recalls, referring to relocating back to Missouri.

By summer 2020, she was close to leaving music altogether. “I was working the drive-through and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I think I'm just going to go to school’ because I really wanted to be... I still want to be an art therapist where I go into schools and do art through craft therapy,’” she tells PEOPLE.

By October, she moved back to Los Angeles and took on a series of odd jobs — from nannying to working as a production assistant. (“I worked at a donut shop for most of the time. That was my longest part-time job.”) where she promised herself she’d give herself a year to try and make music work again. Around the one year mark, she finally made headway — she landed a publishing deal with Sony and by March 2022, she reunited with Nigro and shared “Naked in Manhattan,” a euphoric anthem about having a queer crush.  

Along the way, Roan earned a cult-fandom in part due to TikTok, where she “gained a quick following by being unhinged” and not talking about her music.

“My music [was] nothing really massive, we're not talking ‘abcdefu’ [by Gayle]. We're not talking [Doja Cat’s] ‘Say So’ when that blew up, nothing like that happened,” she recalls. "TikTok was just a way to display my personality and the inner workings, but I feel like it was hell most of the time trying to get it together as an independent artist and also having a part-time job.”

Roan, who was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder in 2022, found herself struggling even while gaining more exposure on the platform. 

“The app breeds mental illness,” she asserts. “When I was really, really sick and I was posting twice a day and going live every day, it rewards that type of behavior. I had to really figure out what was right for me, and I'm still figuring that out.”

She adds, “It just was really difficult for me to learn how to express myself on TikTok in a way that didn't feel like I was just dead inside, because I think most artists feel like social media is soul-sucking for art.”

Roan, who now has upwards of 155,000 TikTok followers, says she had to be OK with “being cringe.” “I don't want to f—ing be on there,” she shrugs.

Roan’s fanbase expanded as she continued releasing a string of singles — “My Kink Is My Karma,” “Femininonmenon,” “Casual”— and turned her live shows into theme parties with like “slumber party kissin’,” “goth grunge and glitter” and “so you wanna be a pop star,” which all came with a dress code.

“I think people like to party and I think my project feels like a party,” she says. “I think that people just want to be happy and reflect, sing, dance and dress up, and feel free. The project gives people an opportunity to express themselves without judgment and freedom to discover themselves in the same way that I feel like the project allows me to discover myself.”

At a time when drag bans and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is at its height, Roan also turned her concerts into opportunities to celebrate drag — featuring queens as her openers. Inspired by Orville Peck’s 2018 show at The Troubadour in West Hollywood, Roan told herself whenever she had a headline tour she’d book drag queens as her openers. Finally, in 2023, with her Naked in North America tour, she was able to do it. 

“It's just a great way to engage the local queer community to that city,” she explains. "I encourage people to tip the queens, that's redistributing funds within the community there, and also it just gives a platform for the drag queens. Some of these queens have never performed in front of a crowd that big before, and it's just fun.”

With the release of her long-awaited debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Roan embraces the ethos of her live shows with glittery pop bangers and cheeky choruses, featuring many of the singles that have helped Roan cement her place as a burgeoning pop star over the past few years as well as some newer numbers.

“They all are part of the same story that's just been evolving for the past four years, and I just felt like they had to be in there,” Roan says of her decision to include many of her past singles. “I felt like they were part of the bigger picture, so they needed to be on the record.”

While crafting her debut, Roan was inspired by drag shows, the 1995 camp classic Showgirls, burlesque dancers and Pinterest. “My career is on Pinterest. If you were to hack it in my Pinterest account, every spoiler is in there ever. You could just see everything,” she quips. 

The album, she says, is “just daydreams in drag” — the result of doing “a lot of inner child work” and embracing herself unapologetically. 

It’s what has allowed Roan to have the time of her life on her debut. With “Hot to Go!,” for instance, Roan mirrors the bratty angst of Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!” and “Good 4 U” with a “cheerleading song.” 

“I solely wrote it for crowd participation, because I love the 'YMCA' and I love the 'Macarena,' how everyone knows it,” she laughs. During a songwriting session with Nigro, she Googled classic cheers, and stumbled upon “hot to go.” But she put her own twist on it: “I was like, ‘What if the song's just about being hot?’”

She also doesn’t shy away from being vulgar. Jumping off of the wistfully horny “Casual,” Roan shares “Guilty Pleasure” on the record — an exhilarating ‘80s club-meets-Madonna’s Ray of Light anthem primed for the dancefloor. “Feels like pornography /Watching you try on jeans,” she muses. 

“My mom hates it,” she says of her raunchy lyrics.

With the release of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Roan is on the verge of a new level of fame — she’s even slated to open for her friend Rodrigo on the 2024 Guts World Tour. 

Is there a possibility they’ll work together on music?

“I would be so down to collaborate if she wanted to, but honestly, whatever she's up for, I don't push for that type of stuff,” she says.

Roan has some other dreams of her own. She wants to do a co-headlining show with Trixie Mattel and MUNA and would love to open for Dua Lipa. She also hopes a judge slot on RuPaul's Drag Race is in the cards for her one day.

“A collab with makeup or something would be cute,” she says. “I think there's just so many fun things that we could do.”