Princess Chappell Roan
Volume III
Happy Sunday! And happy Mother’s Day.
For this week’s Sunday Scaries, we’re getting a little raunchy, a little crass, and totally camp.
I should note that I’m very much late to the party here. I’m not cool enough to go to Coachella, and I’m not queer or super entrenched in queer art. All this to say, it’s only been in the last month or so that I’ve become acquainted with the absolute maniacal joy that is Chappell Roan and her music.
If you’re not yet familiar with Chappell (pronounced chapel like the Sistine Chapel), boy are you in for a treat. I recommend starting with her Tiny Desk Concert.
The thumbnail alone should pique your interest. I’m not quite sure how to describe Chappell’s look here— or her band’s, for that matter. It’s camp; it’s drag. With her hot pink mini dress, knee-high socks, long gloves, collapsable fan, powder white face, and blue eye-shadow, her look reminds me simultaneously of a geisha, Marie Antoinette, a Victorian-era sex worker, a drag queen, and a kid gone buck wild in the dress up bin. She has lipstick on her teeth (intentionally!) and is sporting this enormous red wig that’s matted and knotted and surely killing her neck. Somewhere in the mass of hair are a cigarette butt, several butterfly clips, and a tiara. Truly, her commitment to the visuals, for what is ultimately a concert performed inside of an office cubical, is impressive.
Maybe you see the thumbnail and decide it’s not for you. Fine. But you gotta hear this girl sing. She has powerhouse vocals and a hell of a range. Her music has influences from other queer or queer-coded pop-stars like Robyn, Madonna, Cher, and Lana Del Ray. And yet, it’s original and not quite like anything I’ve heard before.
The arrangement she played for Tiny Desk leans less heavily on pop-synth beats and brings in acoustic guitar and a strings section(!). Her lyrics are fun and funny. Like any great drag queen, she plays off the crowd, working the audience between songs and employing call and response lyrics that invite the crowd to take part in the performance.
Perhaps what I love most about Chappell is that she’s both self aware and unapologetically herself. Her lyrics are unabashedly queer; her visuals are over-the-top and tacky and she knows it— tackiness is the point. Part of me wants to transport her back in time to just before the 2019 Met Gala so she can teach a seminar on camp to all the celebrities on Wintour’s invite list.
I realize I’m embarrassing myself with all of my fangirl-ing so, in the spirit of Mother’s Day, I’ll close out this post with this comment left by a millennial mom on Chappell’s Tiny Desk video.
As we trudge into Monday, I’m finding solace in the knowledge that, somewhere, a mom and her 3-year-old daughter are listening to Princess Chappell together. I hope you’ll give her a listen, too.
Warmly,
Isabelle