In one of several headline-grabbing moments from her epic set at New York’s Governors Ball festival on Sunday, fast-rising singer Chappell Roan revealed that she turned down an offer to perform at a White House Pride event.
“In response to the White House, who asked me to perform for Pride,” Roan, dressed in a glammed-up Statue of Liberty costume that exposed her backside, said directly into a video camera broadcasting onto the festival’s giant screens. “We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.” A rep for the singer confirmed to Variety that the White House had reached out to Roan via her management and was declined; a rep for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Referencing her costume, she continued later, “I am in drag of the biggest queen of all,” she said to cheers and laughs. “But in case you had forgotten what’s etched on my pretty little toes, ‘Give me your tired, your poor; your huddled masses yearning to breath free,'” she said, quoting the poem written on the 1903 bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. “That means freedom and trans rights, that means freedom and women’s rights, and it especially means freedom for all people in oppressed” — she paused, apparently tearing up — “for all oppressed people in occupied territories.”
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However, the seriousness of her statement was slightly undercut by her abrupt change in tone when saying “Thank you! OK, we’re gonna do ‘Hot to Go!’’”
Her performance, which lit up social media on Sunday evening, began with an “Am I Gay?” quiz posted on the video screens, and played up a New York theme: She took the stage by emerging from a giant fake apple in her Statue of Liberty costume, and performed her second new song to be aired this year, titled “Subway.”
A mid-tempo ballad, the song is more low-key than her “Good Luck Babe!” single released in April but has swooning verses and continues the insecure vein of some of her lyrics — one line goes “Fuck this city, I’m moving to Saskatchewan.”
While Roan’s star has been rising rapidly over the past few months, it was several years in the making. Born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz and raised in a Christian household in Missouri, Roan was discovered as a 17-year-old singing covers on YouTube, quickly signed with Atlantic Records and moved to Los Angeles. She released a folk-leaning EP and toured as an opening act for Vance Joy, but the deal did not work out and she returned home. She began collaborating with Olivia Rodrigo co-writer Daniel Nigro (before he’d met Rodrigo), signed with his label and pacted with Island Records in 2022. She began touring and played a galvanizing set at New York’s Webster Hall in March of last year, and released her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” in September.
This year saw the release of her most successful song to date, the synth-pop anthem “Good Luck Babe!,” and played the Coachella festival in April. Yet until recent weeks her rise was unusually gradual, speading by word of mouth, and she has been widely embraced by the queer community, of which she is a proud member.
“I love the queer community,” she told Variety last year. “When queer people are together, it’s the happiest, most vibrant feeling. The shows are a way for me to give a safe space to queer people and to have fun and dress up. It feels like magic on stage. I’m literally getting teary-eyed because it’s everything I ever wanted.”