The Unending Rise of a Midwest Princess

The lights dim, string instruments begin ringing out, a single spotlight seeks center stage and the strings give way to keys as our Midwest Princess steps up to the mic. Her voice reverberates with theatrical melancholy as she sings the opening line:  “Same old story time again / Got so close, but then you lost it.” There is an invisible crowd before her holding their breath. She seems to be speaking in third person, reprimanding her past self as she tells us about all these intimate things she shared with a man that still vanished at the suggestion of meeting up for coffee. The lights brighten ever so gently, revealing a choir of people behind the princess as she rings out, “And I don’t understand why can’t any man–.” Then the choir, strings, and gentle piano are all crushed under the heartbeat-bass you hear in the club at midnight when your friend has ordered another round of shots you didn’t have to pay for. The stage takes a complete one-eighty and any viewer or listener is catapulted back ten or fifteen years when pop legends like Lady Gaga and Kesha ruled every radio station there was.

Chappell Roan is not someone that decided to release a song on TikTok six months ago; she is a seasoned veteran, having released original music on YouTube way back in 2016 and signing to her first label in 2017. But in the last year alone, she has catapulted from a smaller artist with about thirty thousand monthly listeners on Spotify to a global popstar on her way to become a household name with well over forty million monthly listeners. With the anniversary of the release of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess coming up, and to celebrate Chappell Roan’s incredible rise to stardom, I thought it was only fair to revisit the album and inspect the story lying within through the eyes of someone who was there on release day, and has been here every day since. After all, I had a different heart my first play through.

Chappell Roan released her first full length album on September 22, 2023, titled The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (a title reminiscent of rock legend David Bowie’s album called The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars), containing fourteen songs with a runtime of forty-nine minutes. It is loaded top to bottom with musical masterpieces, heavily inspired by 80s synth-pop icons like Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, and early 2000s club classics like Lady Gaga.

The album opens with Femininomenon, bold and in-your-face with its bass and its beat, apologetic and unforgiving. Chappell Roan demands to be heard as she tells the story of this Midwest Princess running off to chase a dream that is larger than life, the fantastical highs and egregious lows of life in the big city, trying to survive as a starving artist and a newly-out queer woman.

The second song is just as fun as the last, upbeat and perfect for dancing. Red Wine Supernova was the first song off this album to really take off, following Chappell’s Tiny Desk Concert performance. She established her character right then and there, showing up with mile-high 80s prom hair and red lipstick purposely smeared across her teeth. This song tells the story of our main character’s gay awakening without pulling any punches: “She showed me things I didn’t know / She did it right there, out on the deck.” Laced in both the beat and the lyrics you get this sense of giddiness; the tempo of the song might even match your heartbeat on a first date.

We’re two for two on this album so far–in my first listen through, I already knew I needed to hear this whole album at the club. That doesn’t just happen. Chappell Roan is one of a kind, and she solidifies her status as popstar with bubbly-bright After Midnight, the third song on the album full of club bass and a catchy chorus.

The fourth song on the album is the first shift we get in tempo, opening up with gentle piano and the oh-so-subtle background noise of people mulling about in a cafe. Coffee is a bittersweet song of ex-lovers trying to connect without crossing any boundaries. To me, this song is also the first proper showcase we get of Chappell’s broader range of vocals, as there are less backing sounds and instrumentals on this track to cover any part of her voice. The energy in the lyrics on this one have shifted as well—we’re not having a grand time anymore. Chappell shows us her potential to break our hearts with these lines and the vivid agony in his voice: “You’ll say that you’re sorry, I know that’s a lie / If I didn’t trust you, it would be fine…” You can tell in the beginning of the song that she was trying to think of ways to make this meetup cause the least amount of harm, but over the course of the song she realizes there is no way to be close to this person without getting hurt in the process. I know firsthand how difficult this realization can be, and how much harder it is still to stand your ground and stay away for the sake of your wellbeing, even when you don’t want to.

After Coffee comes Casual, a brutally honest song full of regret and betrayal. There is a consistent pattern on this album of seeking love and only finding it in places where it is conditional. This isn’t a distinctly queer experience, but knowing it was written from a specifically queer perspective makes it all the more personal. Oddly enough, I do feel that there has been a lack of distinctly queer music, which Chappell Roan has appeared out of the midst to resolve. There’s plenty of media that we gay people can put our own fun little twists and interpretations on, but Chappell is a queer woman writing queer music from a queer perspective for queer people—she gets it in a way other artists don’t.

These next few songs show the rise of the midwest princess, as she breaks free of the things and people weighing her down and is finally able to express herself and party it up in the big city, surrounded by people that encourage her to be her truest self.

HOT TO GO! is easily considered one of the songs that shaped the summer and is so popular that it is still trending. Chappell made a dance for the song when it’s performed live, which has been replicated millions of times on the internet. Young people, grandparents, drag artists, children, celebrities, and white collar dads are all doing the HOT TO GO! dance.

If you really want to see the true scope of Chappell’s impact and the impact of this song alone, watch the videos from her set performed at Lollapalooza this year. According to the festival coordinators, Chappell Roan drew the largest Lolla crowd of all time, with over 110,000 people in attendance.

Track nine is arguably the most underappreciated song on the entire album, while also being the most perfect showcase of Chappell’s full strength as a legendary vocalist in the making. There is a gentle sigh in the beginning before an acoustic guitar falls in. Picture You is rich and sensual, full to the brim with longing and yearning. When this song is performed live, Chappell places a wig on her microphone stand to sing and dance with it. It almost feels too intimate for others to witness live.

Track ten, Kaleidoscope, is full of yearning of a different kind, missing something you haven’t lost yet but know you will eventually. Chappell has tried it all: define the undefinable, love what doesn’t love her back, love from up close and afar. There is no simple way to describe, define or even understand love and all that it entails, as the experience is different for every single person: “And love is a kaleidoscope / How it works, I'll never know.” There is a subdued feeling to this one, a sense that the midwest princess has taken a step back. Whoever she’s speaking to, there is an unfathomable amount of love for them in her voice, even after letting them go. I don’t think we ever stop loving people we loved in the past, and perhaps this is evidence of that.

Track eleven on the album was originally released in April 2020 and has since become an anthem among the LGBTQ+ community, as it pays homage to the gay bars and drag queen culture of West Hollywood. Pink Pony Club follows Kaleidoscope like a phoenix; our Midwest Princess rises out of the ashes of all the mistakes she’s made and who she used to be. This is the song where our princess says goodbye to her hometown. It’s almost like a flashback with this placement among the other songs, like she’s remembering where she came from and why she came here in the first place. This song is about finding a place among your people and your community, finding a true home after spending a lifetime in a place that never made room for you; “Every night’s another reason why I left it all.”

Pink Pony Club is a testament to the fact that there is a place out there for you–and for a lot of people, Chappell has become that place for them.

California is a devastating retelling of the fated fall of the midwest princess.

At seventeen years old, Chappell Roan was signed to Atlantic Records after being discovered on YouTube and promptly moved to Los Angeles. Five years later, in 2020, Atlantic Records dropped Chappell and I imagine this song was written following that loss.

Despite California being painted as this beautiful, luxurious place that promises fame and fortune and never dies–she repeats throughout the song, come get me out. California isn’t at all what she thought it would be; even “true love could not persuade [her to stay].” She misses the imperfections and the ever-changing-ness of Missouri, the midwest and its unreliable weather, its hardy people and their thick accents.

I can relate heavily to this song as someone who left a small hometown in exchange for a big city in hopes that it would change my life. But it wasn’t for me. It chewed me up and spat me back out. I couldn’t believe I wanted to go home after how hard I worked to get there in the first place. California brings the story of this Midwest Princess full circle, showing us where that fall comes in in an album full of highs.‍

This album lays out a beautiful, swirling story of discovery, empowerment, belonging, as well as betrayal, heartbreak, and disappointment beyond anything we could imagine—and yet, hardship after hardships, Chappell always gets back up again. What an incredible thing it is to hear an album such as this, to feel the highs and the lows secondhand and then to witness that very same person have her dream come true.

Absolutely chock full of gay yearning, vocal mastery, and classic club bass, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is a ten out of ten in my book, a triumph in the world of music and performance. Chappell Roan is that girl–she is your favorite artist’s favorite artist!