Chappell Roan and his difficulties in dealing with his meteoric rise to fame | People

Its aesthetics camp —a concept of popular art based on humor, irony and exaggeration—, his openly queer and its claim to culture drag On stage they have positioned Chappell Roan, alter ego Kayleigh Rose Amstutz (26 years old, Missouri), is one of the most prominent figures in the current music scene. However, her rise to fame, which can only be described as meteoric after years of an anonymous career, has been and is a path of light and shadow. Roan, who has reached almost 45 million monthly listeners on Spotify and who was crowned best new artist at the MTV VMAs on Wednesday, September 11, became known thanks to her performances as the opening act on Olivia Rodrigo’s tour this summer, which positioned her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023), in the top 10 on the US sales charts. But her newfound fame has brought her security problems and clashes with fans due to the pressure she is under due to her newfound star status. “They have to see me as just another bitch on the street,” she said, referring to her fans in a recent interview. interview for Rolling Stone“You can’t yell at some random bitch on the sidewalk that you don’t know. It’s considered street harassment or catcalling,” he said.

Although in an interview for The Washington Post Last July Roan said that having that version drag Being aware of herself is good because it helps her separate the public from the private; for her fans the boundaries are blurred by an artificial sense of familiarity created by the Internet. And even the boundaries have been crossed: the young artist has been dealing, for a few weeks now, with an active stalker who showed up at her parents’ house and even followed her to her hotel in New York. “Now I have to have security,” she says in her interview for Rolling Stone“It’s very unfortunate.” Among other problems the singer has faced, she highlights a kiss without consent, the leak of her father’s personal number and the harassment of a man at an airport for an autograph. “I came home and fell to my knees. Now it’s hard for me to cry because of the medication, but I cried and screamed,” Roan recalls about this last incident.

Roan, who is adamant about defending her boundaries with her fans, has attested that several pop stars have approached her to show support: Elton John, Charli XCX, Troye Sivan, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga, among others. The singer also told the magazine that she has met with Sabrina Carpenter, who is in a similar position to her. Carpenter’s latest album, Short n’ Sweet, debuted with the third-highest sales of the year so far, 362,000 units in its first week. “We’re both going through something very difficult,” explains Roan, who is trying to manage the success of singles like Good Luck Babe!, a song about being in love with a girl who isn’t ready to accept that she likes women that debuted in April 2024 at number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100. “She (Carpenter) feels like everything is flying away and she’s barely holding on. It was nice to know that someone else feels that way,” says Roan.

Her stress from the whirlwind of fame has been compounded by her bipolar disorder. “I’ve been in intensive care and individual therapy for four days a week and it’s definitely been difficult to balance promoting (her songs) and being constantly active on social media,” The singer said in May 2022 when she made her illness public through a post on Instagram“I don’t really talk about it a lot, but it affects me on a daily basis and it’s a big part of my music. I’m in a healthy place, I just wanted to share it because I think it’s important to talk about mental health.”

The struggles Roan is facing in staying active as a performer on such a massive scale became apparent as early as June of this year in the middle of a headlining performance in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the middle of the concert, the artist broke down in tears. “I was trying so hard to do what a performer does and just say, ‘Keep going! Be the character! ’” she explained to the audience, demonstrating the anxiety she feels about the rapid pace of her career. “I was afraid of disappointing people after they saw these videos of me serving. I wasn’t serving that day and I had to be honest.”

In her last public appearance, at the MTV VMAs this Wednesday, the singer Hot To Go! The incident once again made evident the tensions and stresses that her newfound celebrity status brings to her. While her assistant was adjusting her dress on the red carpet before the gala, Roan reacted impulsively to a photographer present, shouting at him: “Shut the f*** up! Not me, bitch!” In the video showing the incident, we cannot hear what the photographer did or said to anger the artist. After the incident, Roan explained to Entertainment Tonight She said her reaction was due to the tension of the moment and some “bad” words. “It is quite overwhelming and scary, especially for someone who has a lot of anxiety, to have someone start yelling at you. The red carpet is terrible and I yelled back because I will not allow anyone to talk to me like that,” she explained without clarifying what the man said to her.

Despite these difficulties, the artist wants to continue fighting and working in the music industry. “I only dreamed of doing the show of my dreams,” Roan tells Rolling StoneThe artist is currently deep in the midst of recording her next album with Grammy-winning producer Dan Nigro. So far, they have put together “five, maybe six, songs that feel pretty good,” the artist confirmed, including a country song, “one that is really from the eighties” and an acoustic song. Roan says she has been seeing her therapist twice a week and is working on a songwriting plan that will get her through December: “I think I will have from November to mid-May free to write. How am I going to write a record without getting bored? I have to be bored and have nothing in my brain in order to get something out.”