Chappell Roan Talks "Casual" Music Video, Trans Rights, and Creating The Pink Pony Club of Her Dreams - Teen Vogue

5/22/23, 2:15 PM Chappell Roan Talks “Casual” Music Video, Trans Rights, and Creating the Pink Pony
the Pink Pony Club of Her Dreams | Teen Vogue
Culture
Chappell Roan Talks “Casual” Music Video, Trans

Rights, and Creating the Pink Pony Club of Her
Dreams
“It is the storyline of a girl who moved from a small conservative town to a city
and had an awakening of this world she never knew existed,” Kayleigh says.
BY P. CLAIRE DODSON
MARCH 9, 2023
A few songs into her Webster Hall show in New York, rising pop star Chappell Roan
removed her Hannah Montana wig. An iconic scene from the Disney Channel show
played over the speakers, where Miley Stewart removes her blonde pop girl getup to
reveal her true self to her best friend Lily. “I’m Hannah Montana,” she admits, the
illusion shattered, the voice behind the curtain revealed. And underneath: the real
girl, the person behind the persona.
Underneath this Hannah wig, however, was another persona: Chappell Roan, the

stage moniker for 24-year-old Kayleigh Rose Amstutz from Willard, Missouri.
Chappell is a star who refuses to be tamped down, curly red hair flying, raised on drag
and generations of pop divas. Confident, bombastic, sensual, with the kind of energy
to turn a room into a disco dance party where everyone can feel like the most fun, the
most free version of themselves.
Chappell Roan is the outlet for Kayleigh’s fantasies, the fantasies of a queer girl who
grew up in the kind of Christian conservatism that shapes a whole town. The kind
that leaves a mark years later. At one point in our interview, she catches herself
referring to the sexual language she uses in songs as “weird shit.” She straightens up
from where she’d been slouching on the couch at Island Records in midtown
Manhattan. “It’s not weird. It’s, like, fine.” So much of religious trauma around sex has
to be unlearned slowly over time. “It's so ingrained. My music is the outlet for that.
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5/22/23, 2:15 PM Chappell Roan Talks “Casual” Music Video, Trans Rights, and Creating the Pink Pony Club of Her Dreams | Teen Vogue
But as a person, as Kayleigh, I don't know when that's going to go away. I'm not the
character of Chappell Roan in real life.”
Chappell Roan - Pink Pony Club (Official Music Video)
Chappell has been working her way across the United States on a sold-out tour of
themed concerts: In Houston, rhinestones and rainbows. Seattle was goth, grunge,
and glitter. In Nashville, a campy slumber party. New York and Los Angeles earned
the tag, “So You Wanna Be a POP STAR,” and Chappell and her band dressed
accordingly as Hannah, Avril Lavigne, Lana Del Rey, and David Bowie. The nightly
concepts may differ, but the underlying theme of these shows is the same: this is a
place for queer joy, for feeling yourself, for the cathartic release of fear and anxiety in
one shining dancefloor moment.
On a Monday evening in March, Chappell played to a crowd in Missouri; Kayleigh

had never been around so many queer people in her hometown before. Growing up,
gay boys were bullied at school, and no girls were out. There was no Gay-Straight
Alliance, much less a pink pony club. The realization she might be queer came when
she was in seventh grade, wondering why boys didn’t have crushes on her. She had the
idle thought: “Maybe I like girls.” She thought about it more. “I was like, girls are so
much prettier,” she says. “Girls are nicer. I like hanging out with girls more. That was
in the back of my head for all of high school. I think I like girls. I didn't know how to
deal with that part of myself except to make fun of it. Haha. It's so funny. It's a phase.
Haha.”
Kayleigh’s experiences with sexuality in all its forms are still evolving. She’s still
unpacking old things, the way we all do. Chappell is on stage singing about kink;
Kayleigh is intentionally celibate right now. “This is the first time I've ever been single
for real on purpose and not had a crush on literally anyone. This never happened in
my life,” she says. “It's so freeing because I didn't realize how much that ruled my life.”
It was changing the way she looked, the way she spoke. “Now that there's a weight
lifted off, I feel free. I didn't realize how much I was putting myself through hell just
to maybe find someone who would be attracted to me… you have to figure out how to
be happy alone or what the f*ck are you going to do?”
It’s a duality that can become a disconnect when meeting fans sometimes. She gets
understandably uncomfortable when fans are overly flirty, or try to hit on her. “It
makes me feel really weird because I'm just not like that.” At the same time, she gets it.
“What the f*ck could I expect? I don't know. I've been on live before on TikTok and
talked about how I can't watch Euphoria. And they're like, ‘Okay, Miss Naked in
Manhattan.’ I'm like, that makes sense that you said that. It's just like, it's just three-
dimensional.”
ST YLE P OLITIC S CULTURE IDENTIT Y VIDEO SUMMIT SHOPPING NEWSLE T TER
PHOTO BY RYAN CLEMENS
Kayleigh’s full queer awakening came when she moved to Los Angeles in 2018; she
had been dating men and feeling lackluster about the vibes. “[Dating a boy is] just
literally not fun,” she reflects now. “It's not fun. It's not hot. It's not interesting. It's
boring.” Per the lore in the creation of her 2020 hit “Pink Pony Club,” she went to The
Abbey. It was her first time in a gay club as a 21-year-old. “They have fog shooting out
whenever the beat drops, and there's dancers swinging from the ceiling,” she says.
Kayleigh imagined it as an oasis, and the anthem that now closes her live shows in a
whir of confetti and euphoria was born.
Though “Pink Pony Club” is her biggest record to date, the song — produced by
Olivia Rodrigo collaborator Dan Nigro — didn’t result in instant fame and money.
That year, Kayleigh had run out of money in L.A., ended a four and half year
relationship, and moved home with her parents, working the drive-through at
Midwest chain Scooter's Coffee. She was in a period of hypomania with her Bipolar
II. “It was just so bad,” she says. The same month she got out of the relationship, she
was dropped from her label, Atlantic Records, which she had signed with at 17 years
old.
It was the closest she came to leaving music altogether. “Everything was leading me to
tell me that I need to stop,” she says. “Nothing's working. I have no idea where to go.
I'm living at home. I was literally sleeping in a twin bed in my parents' office space. I
was 22 and I was like, what is this anymore? I don't know.” She felt like she had one
last shot to move back to L.A. and make it work, so she did. The rent was due. She
took on gigs as a production assistant and a nanny, and got part-time work at a donut
shop. By summer 2021, she could quit the donut shop — Sony had signed her.
“It was hard, but it made me not afraid to be there again because I know I was okay,”
she says, thankful she had the backup option with her parents. “I made it while
making $1,400 a month when my rent was a thousand dollars.”
When she was finally able to tour in 2022, she met people who had fallen in love with
“Pink Pony Club” and her other 2020 singles, “Love Me Anyway” and “California.”
Those songs had come out in one of the darkest periods of her life, but they had
gotten other people through those early pandemic years. It was validating, a dream
come true of the career she’d made up in her head as a teenager. (Meanwhile, her 12-
year-old brother can often be found rolling around on his hoverboard singing “Pink
Pony Club,” a song her parents love, too.)
As she prepares to release her debut full-length album later this year, Kayleigh is
always thinking about the live show. “I love anthemic pop. I just go in to the studio
every time like, how do we make the biggest, funnest song ever?” Two weeks before
her 2023 tour started, she wrote an instant hit called “Hot to Go,” which she created
with a cheerleading dance in mind, one that she guides the audience through each
night. “I saw a Queen video where they're singing ‘Radio Ga Ga’ at [Wembley]
stadium and the whole crowd was doing this thing. I was like, how do I make the
crowd do that?”
When she released “Femininomenon,” about an online relationship gone sour, friends
and fans told her it was “jarring.” (Kayleigh interjects herself: “Side note, I don't know
why people feel the need to tell me this every night. Someone's like, I hated that song
when you put it out. I’m like, fire.”) Experiencing “Femininomenon” live, however, is
transcendent, iconic. She had the vision the whole time.
The forthcoming album isn’t exactly a concept album, but it has a full narrative arc.
“It is the storyline of a girl who moved from a small conservative town to a city and
had an awakening of this world she never knew existed,” Kayleigh says. “Which
includes queerness, which includes heartbreak, which includes falling in love, which
includes the city and clubs, and it's the world of Chappell Roan.” She likes the story in
Ethel Cain’s 2022 record Preacher’s Daughter, this idea of a rise and fall.
On March 9 she released the new music video for the angsty slow-burn rock ballad
“Casual,” which she describes as “Aquamarine, but like, gay.” It’s a culmination of the
references that shape her visuals and live shows, heavily inspired by art films, cabaret,
and drag performances. For each night on this tour, she recruited local drag queens in
each city to open for her, a way to pay forward these influences on her work and
celebrate local queer communities.
When Kayleigh wrote “Pink Pony Club,” when she planned these live shows, she
didn’t know the significance they would take on in a country where trans rights are
under attack, where public drag shows are being restricted. The same day
the Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill that prohibits “adult-oriented
performances that are harmful to minors” in public spaces and non-age restricted
venues, she was performing with drag openers in Nashville to a crowd of many queer
people.
“It was a very emotional show, it was heartbreaking,” she says passionately, tearing up.
“To know that I was one of the last shows that would happen with all ages with drag
performers [for now] is just… I am not scared, because the queer community is strong,
we have each other’s backs, and we will overcome hate. We always do. I will continue
doing drag. We will continue this, this is not stopping.” She’s been donating a portion
of proceeds from her shows to For the Gworls, an organization that helps Black trans
people with rent and gender-affirming healthcare; at the Nashville show, she
partnered with The Oasis Center to help cover the cost of therapy for queer children.
To those who claim drag harms children, Kayleigh has an adamant rebuttal: “It’s not
about kids, it’s about attacking trans people,” she says. “It’s a lot less about protecting
children and a lot more about harassing trans people, or people who wanna dress how
they wanna dress. It comes from a lot of fear and a lot of confusion and hatred.” If she
had to do a call to action: “Let’s redistribute our fund to the trans community right
now. Let’s make sure our trans community is okay on rent. Let’s have each other’s

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5/22/23, 2:15 PM Chappell Roan Talks “Casual” Music Video, Trans Rights, and Creating the Pink Pony

the Pink Pony Club of Her Dreams | Teen Vogue

Chappell Roan Talks “Casual” Music Video, Trans

Underneath this Hannah wig, however, was another persona: Chappell Roan, the

Chappell Roan - Pink Pony Club (Official Music Video)

On a Monday evening in March, Chappell played to a crowd in Missouri; Kayleigh

ST YLE P OLITIC S CULTURE IDENTIT Y VIDEO SUMMIT SHOPPING NEWSLE T TER

PHOTO BY RYAN CLEMENS

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