The Rise and Fall…
Born in a trailer park in Willard, Missouri, Kayleigh Rose Amstutz grew up in a conservative town, attending church weekly with her family. She took piano lessons as a preteen and was a member of her school’s choir. After an initial success at her eighth grade talent show, Amstutz was encouraged to continue performing and began posting her music online, including the single “Die Young.” At only 17, she signed with Atlantic Records, relocating to Los Angeles and releasing her first EP School Nights. Amstutz adopted the stage name Chappell Roan in honor of her late grandfather, taken in part from his name, Dennis Chappell, and his favorite song based on Curley Fletcher‘s cowboy poem “The Strawberry Roan.”

After her first taste of queer freedom in West Hollywood’s gay bars, Chappell released the 2020 queer anthem “Pink Pony Club,” a club anthem untimely dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic. Later that year, the artist faced difficulties when Atlantic Records dropped her. Two years would pass before Chappell released any new content. Struggling back onto her feet, the artist worked with producer Dan Nigro and his label Amusement Records on her upcoming album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. In 2022, she released a number of the fiery singles that appear in this album, including “Naked in Manhattan” and “Feminomenon.” Blending 80s synth, dance-pop, and the drama of drag, she quickly caught fire in the LGBTQ+ community, earning a loyal, passionate fanbase. Since the album’s release, Chappell Roan has skyrocketed to dizzying heights, her debut album topping the U.K. charts and landing the number two spot on the Billboard 200. This past summer, she played a supporting slot in Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS tour and earned nominations for six grammys, including in all the “Big Four” categories.

Speaking with Billboard, Chappell attributes her not-so-overnight success to letting go. “The second that I took myself not seriously, is when things started working, and that was really scary.” However, or rather understandably, the artist’s shocking rise to fame has not been without challenges. During her Midwest Princess tour, she was diagnosed with severe depression in addition to a previous diagnosis of bipolar II disorder, and consequently cancelled a number of festival dates to prioritize her mental health. Intense media coverage and invasive fans and paparazzi have led the artist to become out-spoken against the stresses and pressures celebrities face, especially from the media.

…Of A Queer Pop Star

Chappell’s signature marriage of burlesque drag and rural Midwestern heartland shines a spotlight onto her own identity—one of so many queer individuals around the U.S. While high fashion queerdom might lean towards dreams of the big city and perspectives beyond small town America, this doesn’t change the fact that there are queer people everywhere, all in need of an idol like Chappell Roan to bring their stories and experiences to life. “There are queens in every town,” said Chappell, in an interview with TIME. “Those girls feel the same type of passion for queerness, drag as Chicago, you know, like New York.” Notably, many of Chappell’s openers have been local drag queens and portions of ticket sales often go towards LGBTQ+ charities, further deepening the artist’s connection with her queer fanbase.

Chappell Roan represents a special kind of queer pop star—one who won’t water down her identity or opinions to please the public eye. And this model comes at just the right time, as young queer people in the U.S. face intense backlash for their own identities. 2024 alone saw unprecedented amounts of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, with many of these bills coming from Chappell’s own Missouri. Now more than ever, pop culture needs a desperate infusion of free, unadulterated spirit and self-expression, and no one encapsulates this more than the Midwest’s own melodramatic princess, Chappell Roan.

Chappell’s Predecessors
Chappell is by no means the first queer pop star or even the first openly queer pop star. Predecessors like Dusty Springfield, David Bowie, and perhaps most notably, Elton John, paved the way for future generations of singers and songwriters to be open and unapologetic in their sexualities.

Dusty Springfield

Britain’s white soul singer and camp icon, Dusty Springfield, was a woman ahead of her time. A huge hit in the 1960s first with the group the Springfields and then as a solo artist, Dusty used her platform to uplift marginalized groups, including fellow motown artists. In the 1970s, the artist faced scrutiny from the media for her lack of public romantic relationships, and was often questioned about her sexuality. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Dusty said, “I know I’m perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy. More and more people feel that way and I don’t see why I shouldn’t.” Later in life, she became an idol for many in the LGBTQ+ community. She married actress Teda Bracci in 1982 even though the wedding wouldn’t be legally recognized. She is also infamous for her quintessential blonde beehive and heavy eye makeup, a look that served as proto-inspiration for drag artistry and camp fashion.

David Bowie

Rock and roll legend David Bowie was infused with influences from the underground, including gay culture and glam rock, and led a hugely successful music career on the fringe of the pop genre. Through his persona Ziggy Stardust, he popularized sexual deviance, appealing to audiences with an alien androgyny which became increasingly desirable to the general public. While David Bowie’s personal sexuality was relatively heteronormative as he had a wife and son, his performance persona flirted with homosexuality and androgyny, so much so that many in the LGBTQ+ community looked to him as their queer pop icon. Like Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Kayleigh Amstutz’s Chappell Roan is often seen as a camp persona performed and left on stage, though for Kayleigh, Chappell is perhaps more representative of her own sexuality than Bowie’s Ziggy.

Elton John

Elton John, undeniably one of the most influential pop and rock stars of all time, is a champion for LGBTQ+ rights. As a queer artist himself, his decorated career and internationally recognized songs like “Rocket Man,” “Tiny Dancer,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and “Your Song,” provide the basis for an astoundingly influential platform from which to work. As early as 1976, Elton John spoke out as queer, telling Rolling Stone magazine, “‘There’s nothing wrong with going to bed with somebody of your own sex. I think everyone’s bisexual to a certain degree…It’s not a bad thing to be.” He and his husband David Furnish have spoken out strongly for LGBTQ+ rights, and the singer continues to inspire generations of queer youth around the globe, including Chappell Roan herself. In her interview with TIME, Roan recalls her first time meeting Elton. “He said something very sweet: ‘LA Times says you are one of the most exciting, up-and-coming queer artists and that’s what they said about me. We have that in common.'” Apparently, this meeting was so overwhelming for Chappell that she shaved her eyebrows off when she got home!

The path to visible pop queerdom was trailblazed by artists like Dusty Springfield, David Bowie, and Elton John, warming up a historically intolerant general public to concepts like camp, glamour, and sexual deviance. For Chappell Roan and later generations of pop stars, the road to success is now smoother, albeit imperfect. There is much work yet to be done. Now more than ever, the unapologetic, mainstream queerness of artists like Chappell is needed to promote visibility and understanding in a political climate dominated by uncertainty and division.