Thanks, Chappell Roan, For Getting Us Through 2024

Before the end of April 2024, I’d never heard of Chappell Roan. That’s not exactly a surprise considering I’m a music dummy who often first learns of tunes when they show up in a movie trailer. Up to that point, Roan had garnered a following in the seven years since her first EP, School Nights. Her September 2023 album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, catapulted her to a new level of fame. It was a track from this album, “Hot to Go!” that became my Chappell Roan gateway drug. One listen… and I was hooked. I’d spent my whole life idolizing redheaded women exuding queer energy and maximalist femininity. It was like Roan was cooked up in a lab to become my favorite pop star.

However, she wasn’t just a big deal to me. Chappell Roan became an icon to countless people in 2024. This pop culture “femininomenon” resonated so profoundly because she was just the dose of joy and energy queer folks needed over the last 12 months. It was an arduous year for queer civil liberties, and Roan’s music was a welcome rebuke to that.

While doing research for a recent Dallas Observer piece, my heart sank seeing a series of articles from 2015 pontificating that a corner had been turned for queer rights in America. At the time, some activists proclaimed that the fight for equality was far from over, even with same-sex marriage legalized in the Supreme Court. Even so, many headlines from that era exuded an air of “mission accomplished.” Of course, a year later, Donald Trump landed in the highest office in America. Now, he’s preparing to re-enter that same seat of power, spreading ableist lies about vaccines causing autism and minimizing the trans community. This comes after Trump built his presidential campaign on transphobic rhetoric. Such harmful words didn’t just exist in the GOP. Competing Democratic politicians like Collin Allred used transphobic rhetoric to win over right-wing votes.

Everywhere you looked in 2024, there was another reminder that 2015 was not a positive turning point for queer rights. Instead, it was a precursor to further challenges that have always affected queer folks in capitalistic societies. Existing within this ceaseless onslaught of normalized bigotry is overwhelming. How do LGBTQIA+ people cope with all of it? Art has always been a place for queer folks to subvert and survive toxic status quos. From Nan Goldin’s photography to Marlon Riggs movies to Tracy Chapman songs, art is where queerness festers and endures. Chappell Roan’s music continued this tradition in fantastic fashion.

In a year of bipartisan stifling of queer voices, Roan’s tunes displayed a welcome middle finger to authority. Here was a woman not only belting out tunes explicitly exploring queer material… she did so LOUDLY. I mean, just look at how she dressed on stage! Roan’s default stage lewk, informed by drag queens, ensured she always showed up with gloriously outsized makeup and bright colors. Sometimes she came out dressed as the Statue of Liberty; other times, she rocked her tight blue band leader outfit from “Hot to Go!” adorning her physical form. Then there was her big VMA performance, where she appeared in a medieval outfit paying homage to Julie d’Aubigny. Consistently leaving an impression across all these outfits was her bouncy curly red hair, always jostling as Roan energetically danced to her ditties.

All those cis-het folks who say, “I don’t mind gay people… as long as they’re not in my face about it” had their souls leave their bodies once they saw Roan’s fashion choices. Hearing her songs could’ve only instilled further fear into their hearts! Roan’s pronounced execution of queer auras extended into her vocals, which often went for the masterfully big and brash. Just look at her iconic bellowing of “I told you sooooooooooo” in “Good Luck, Babe!” Or her screaming lines like, “Did you hear me??? Play the f**king beat!!” in “Femininomenon.”

Are queer women supposed to only exist in states of timidity or dread? Are they defined solely by longing gazes if they have a pulse running through their veins? Chappell Roan certainly didn’t get that memo. We were all sonically richer for that in 2024. Roan’s songs, like “Good Luck, Babe!”, “Naked in Manhattan,” or “The Giver,” dealt with emotions that don’t subtly creep into our bodies. Love, lust, and nervousness over smooching consume every inch of us, sending blaring alarm bells into our brains while ironically making it hard even to squeak out a word. Roan’s maximalist vocal flourishes provided a phenomenal auditory mirror to those feelings. Here were tunes that conveyed how pronounced queer gal lust really is!

Better yet, like her bold outfits, Roan’s big, showy line deliveries made her an exhilarating rebuke to heteronormative societal standards of how queer folks are “supposed” to behave. This subversiveness also extended to how loudly and proudly Roan sang of her lust for women. For too long, American culture’s default idea of queer gal intimacy was defined by the dehumanizing male gaze rather than, say, Desert Hearts. Roan’s lyrics—like describing how “it’s like pornography” watching a pretty lady “try on jeans” or declaring she wrote a song “so you’d sleep with me”—centered queer women’s experiences.

These songs didn’t emphasize outside cis-het male POVs. Instead, tunes like “Naked in Manhattan,” “The Giver,” or “Hot to Go!” exuded bouncy fun told through queer women’s gazes. Much like an inspired Victoria’s Secret-themed song from comedian Ashley Everheart, these tracks creatively normalized that, yes, queer women are horny too, and that’s awesome! American society views queer sexuality as either “exploitable for a Carl’s Jr. ad” or screams at the very idea of kink at Pride. Roan’s music, with its flirtatious and infectiously fun sexual energy, drop-kicked those standards into the trash where they belong.

Roan’s songs are also the kind that reinforce communal queer joy. Speaking from experience, tunes like “Femininomenon” and “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” are endlessly fun to listen to alone, but they’re even more transcendent when sung with other gays at a drag show or a boisterous karaoke night. The power of Roan’s lyrics, energetic instrumentals, and euphoric musical aura are only enhanced in communal queer settings. These tunes didn’t just create new memories; they reinforced the unity and solidarity that underpin the LGBTQIA+ community. We’re all in this together. None of us are navigating the world alone. Roan’s music bonded so many of us in a challenging year through joyful energy.

Certainly, Roan didn’t invent overtly horny or colorful lesbian pop ditties. Fellow 2020s icons like Chrissy Chlapecka, Sarah Barrios, and Janelle Monáe (all well worth listening to!) unleashed tracks channeling similar energy. Going further back, bands like The Runaways and No Doubt focused on pronounced, vocal women resonating with the queers. What made Roan special in 2024, though, was her rise to mainstream pop culture icon—a status that has almost always eluded openly lesbian musicians.

Roan never knew this timing would align when she wrote tracks like “Pink Pony Club” and “Hot to Go!” years ago. However, songs like “Good Luck, Babe!”—which subvert how queer women are “supposed” to behave—felt perfect for the 2024 landscape. Whenever navigating responsibilities or civil liberties felt too heavy, the gays could listen to “Red Wine Supernova” for the umpteenth time and find temporary bliss.

Roan loudly and provocatively declared to the J.D. Vances, Collin Allreds, and Dan Patricks of the world that gays didn’t need to be quiet or assimilate to deserve respect. We were going to scream and dance anyway. Tracks like “My Kink Is Karma” allowed queers to escape to a world where toxic men got their due. Meanwhile, songs like “The Giver” mocked the kind of guys who often make queer women’s lives a nightmare.

Those fleeting moments of musical joy aren’t a cure-all for societal woes. That comes through activism and community work. However, sometimes, all queers can do to get through another day is clutch bubbly tunes epitomizing queer joy and maximalism. In 2024, Roan expanded what a pop star could “look like.” She gave us countless iconic moments, all while creating a coping mechanism for queers trying to survive.

Chappell Roan was the redheaded woman with the colorful makeup I always dreamed of being. She quickly became my hero after dabbling in her discography in April 2024. Beyond her personal significance to me, the core tenets of her music were perfect for this year in queer history. Songs like “Hot to Go!” would’ve been masterpieces in any year. In 2024, they were acts of defiance against queer suppression.

The world keeps trying to erase us… but I’ll keep dancing at the “Pink Pony Club” in 2025. To put it bluntly, “I’m through with all these hyper mega bummer boys,” and I know I won’t be alone on that dance floor feeling like it’s “a hundred and ninety-nine degrees.” Roan’s lyrics are as magical as spending a night “naked in Manhattan”!