Chappell Roan

Missouri beginnings

Kayleigh Rose Amstutz was born on February 19, 1998, in Willard, Missouri, the oldest of four children. She has described her upbringing as conservative and Christian, with church three times a week and summers at Christian camp. She began playing piano at about ten or eleven, took lessons from age twelve, and first performed publicly at thirteen, singing at a school talent show. Around fourteen she auditioned for America's Got Talent without success, and soon after began posting cover songs to YouTube, where several labels took notice.

She wrote her first original song, “Die Young,” at a summer arts camp in 2014 and uploaded it that November. Showcases in New York led to a record deal with Atlantic Records in 2015, when she was seventeen. In 2016 she adopted the stage name Chappell Roan after her grandfather, Dennis K. Chappell, who died of brain cancer that year, pairing his surname with a word from his favorite song, Curley Fletcher's “The Strawberry Roan.” She graduated from Willard High School a year early to pursue music.

The Atlantic years and a first reinvention

Roan released her debut single, “Good Hurt,” in August 2017 and her first EP, School Nights, the following month, a moody five-song set issued through Atlantic. She supported Vance Joy on his Lay It On Me Tour in 2017 and toured with Declan McKenna in early 2018. That year she moved to Los Angeles full time, which she has said was the first moment she could live openly as a queer woman and begin writing songs from a more personal, openly queer perspective.

In late 2018 she started working with songwriter and producer Dan Nigro, the partnership that would define her sound. In April 2020, at the start of the pandemic, they released “Pink Pony Club,” a buoyant dance-pop story song inspired by the Abbey, a gay bar in West Hollywood. The label disapproved of the stylistic turn, and in August 2020 Atlantic dropped her. Roan has spoken openly about being signed as a minor and left without job experience or health insurance when the deal ended.

Independence and the road back

After being dropped, Roan took a series of day jobs in Los Angeles, including work as a production assistant and at a donut shop, and briefly returned to Missouri to work a drive-thru while saving money. “Pink Pony Club” kept finding an audience anyway, and Vulture later named it its song of summer 2021. The slow-burn hit gave her a devoted cult following without a label behind her, even as her earlier collaborator Nigro focused on Olivia Rodrigo's breakout album.

By March 2022 Roan had signed a publishing deal with Sony and reunited with Nigro to make “Naked in Manhattan,” her first release as an independent artist. She sang backing vocals on several Olivia Rodrigo songs, joined Rodrigo's Sour Tour and a Fletcher tour, and released further independent singles, including “My Kink Is Karma,” “Femininomenon” and “Casual,” while developing the drag-inspired Chappell Roan persona onstage.

Amusement Records and The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

In February 2023 Roan began her debut headlining tour, the Naked in North America Tour, giving each stop a theme and booking drag queens as opening acts, a community-minded approach she has kept ever since. In March 2023 she signed with Amusement Records, the imprint Nigro created expressly for her, in partnership with Island Records, after weighing nine potential partners and insisting on creative control.

Her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, was released on September 22, 2023. It received widespread critical acclaim, holding an aggregate score of 85 on Metacritic, and appeared on year-end lists from Billboard, Rolling Stone, TIME, Nylon and others. Critics praised its bold songwriting and camp presentation, and the record drew on her journey from a small Missouri town to Los Angeles and on her embrace of queerness.

Roan supported the album with the Midwest Princess Tour across 2023 and 2024, adding dates in London, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne, Sydney and Amsterdam. She donated one dollar from every ticket to For the Gworls, a mutual aid group, and opened shows with local drag performers. NPR Music's Tiny Desk Concert, filmed in March 2024, showcased five album songs and left what reviewers called a lasting mark on the series.

“Good Luck, Babe!” and the breakthrough year

In early 2024 Roan opened Olivia Rodrigo's Guts World Tour in the United States and Canada, performed on late-night television, and played Coachella in April. On April 5 she released the stand-alone single “Good Luck, Babe!,” co-written with Justin Tranter and Nigro, who also produced it. The song debuted at No. 77 on the Billboard Hot 100, her first chart entry, and by September reached No. 4, her first top-five hit, while also topping Billboard's Pop Airplay chart.

The single's momentum sent the debut album back up the charts. It reached No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart in August 2024, almost a year after release, and peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with its best week to that point. Roan won Best New Artist at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, performing “Good Luck, Babe!” at the ceremony, and her summer festival crowds swelled; a Lollapalooza spokesperson said her daytime set was the biggest the festival had ever seen.

Grammy recognition and new music

BBC Radio 1 named Roan its Sound of 2025 in January, with a panel of more than 180 musicians and experts, including Elton John and Dua Lipa, choosing her ahead of Ezra Collective, Barry Can't Swim, Myles Smith and English Teacher. At the 67th Grammy Awards on February 2, 2025, she won Best New Artist, her first Grammy, among six nominations that included Album of the Year and Record of the Year.

In her acceptance speech, read from a diary, she called on record labels to pay developing artists a living wage and provide healthcare, closing with the line, “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?” She released “The Giver” in March 2025 and “The Subway” in July 2025, both now featured on her official site. She continues to record and tour as one of the most visible pop artists of her generation.