On September 22, 2023, Chappell Roan released her first full-length album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. The formerly dark indie artist, cursed with cursive singing (God bless her), transformed into a queer anthemic pop princess after ten years of rising and falling in the music industry.

Roan had a difficult start to her career. She was discovered on YouTube in high school, signed to a label, and moved to LA to pursue her career, but was dropped and had to move back home.

“In 2020, I ran out of money like everybody did, and I was a barista working the drive-thru back in Missouri. It was either give it one more shot or maybe go to school and be a biologist,” Roan said in an ABC interview. That year, instead of another biologist, we got her first two singles, “Love Me Anyway” and “California.”

Her synth-pop album takes heavy inspiration from ’80s pop, often compared to Cyndi Lauper, and her campy fashion aesthetic could be seen walking down the mainstage of RuPaul’s Drag Race. She grew up in a tiny town in southern Missouri, where her queerness and energy were suppressed in that conservative Christian environment, and she makes music for all other Midwest princesses.

“I love where I came from because I have an incredible perspective on the Midwest, which I think a lot of people on the coasts kind of put all Midwesterners in one type of category. But there are drag queens. Some people are trans. There are massive queer communities that are just hidden away in these teeny tiny towns, and I feel like that’s who my real community is,” Roan said.

She only recently blew up at the beginning of this year when she opened for Olivia Rodrigo on her Guts stadium tour, and her career has yet to slow down. She’s performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, and drew massive crowds at Coachella, the Governors Ball, Bonnaroo, and sang to the largest audience Lollapalooza has ever seen. She’s received praise from Elton John and landed 12th on Rolling Stone’s “The 100 Best Albums of 2023.”

Roan’s newest single, “Good Luck Babe!,” released on April 5th, debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 and currently sits at over 700 million Spotify streams. At the 2024 VMA’s, where she performed the song in a suit of armor surrounded by fire and sword-wielding dancers, she won Best New Artist, and it is not difficult to see why.

The Rise and Fall is built on the foundation of “being a freak at the club,” but it is more than that. Opening track “Femininomenon,” party classic “After Midnight,” strip club anthem “Pink Pony Club,” and “HOT TO GO!,” where she tells you exactly how to dance, and balance fun with an emotional story. “Femininomenon” is about freeing women from unfulfilling marriages, and “After Midnight” is about escaping an overbearing conservative mother to the freedom of dance. “Pink Pony Club” (the only song I’ve ever cried to) is the story of a girl from Tennessee who runs away to West Hollywood and dances in the club. Her southern mother is appalled, but she is just having fun. “It’s where I belong.”

In between these poppier songs are slower songs about heartbreak and loss. “Casual” is to an ex who wasn’t an ex; “Coffee” is about the pains of turning from a lover to a stranger; “Kaleidoscope” is where she tries to decipher the meaning of love in a heartbreak, and in “California,” she sings about moving back home to Missouri after she first failed in LA.

Roan, along with her collaborator Daniel Niger, is a brilliant and honest lyricist. She is permitting all other Midwest princesses to feel pain, to love, to cry, and to bust it down at the club.

She also permits to be out and proud. Chappell Roan is a lesbian, and she doesn’t hide it. “Femininomenon,” “Red Wine Supernova,” “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl,” “Picture You,” “Naked in Manhattan,” and “Guilty Pleasure” are all directly and (often) explicitly speaking to a woman. Besides “Girls Like Girls” by Hayley Kiyoko and “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry (and to quote Lady Gaga, “I don’t think she kissed a girl”), there hasn’t been a strong presence of authentic lesbianism in mainstream pop music before Chappell.

“She just means so much to me,” said an anonymous UE student. “Listening to her album was the first time I’ve ever heard gay people just having fun. We’re always dying in the movies, so it’s nice that we get to dance as well.”

Roan pays her dues in the queer community. She takes heavy inspiration from drag queens, including dressing up as Divine and turning Sasha Colby’s famous “I’m your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen” into “I’m your favorite artist’s favorite artist,” and she always gives credit where it is due.

“I think it’s important to give back to the queer community,” Roan said. “They give everything to me.”

Her concerts are also such loving and safe spaces. There are outfit themes for every city, such as a mermaid theme from the “Casual” music video, pink cowboy for “Pink Pony Club,” and Midwest princess. Her openers are local drag queens from each city.

“It feels like a slumber party, honestly, just a bunch of the girls, gays, and theys dressing up and having fun,” Caroline Platt, an attendee at her St. Louis concert, said.

Chappell Roan is a talent and phenomenon (sorry, femininomenon) not seen in pop in a long time. We’ll be watching with our jaws on the floor where she dances next.