Dethroned: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

 Our Midwest Princess Builds Her Wings

Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, known to her fans and the mass public as Chappell Roan, was born in a small conservative town called Willard in the heart of Missouri. As the oldest child of four, she grew up going to church every week with the added summer camps and youth groups, while her parents ran a local veterinary clinic. Roan notes that she longed for an outlet, feeling out of place in her small town, and that’s when she decided to take on a variety of hobbies until she found her niche. 

She tried out a variety of things from crafting to cross-country running, but nothing seemed to stick until she took up the performing arts. Roan dove head first into music lessons with the full support of her parents at age eleven. From piano and vocal lessons to acting lessons, she immersed herself into her passion. In 2013, she launched her Youtube channel under her legal name, Kayleigh Rose, where she took inspiration from artists such as Lady Gaga, Stevie Nicks, Karen Carpenter, and Lana Del Ray. 

After years of practice, she wrote her first song “Die Young” and performed it live at an Missouri fair. Soon after, she began pitching her music to a variety of music producers in NYC and LA. When she was just seventeen years old, she signed with Atlantic Records in 2015. For months, she and her parents flew back and forth across the country to work on her first EP titled School Nights that consisted of five songs.

 

Three years later, she moved to LA in 2018, where she first produced what would eventually become a hit, “Pink Pony Club”. However, the track did not immediately do well, and Atlantic Records dropped her. In response to this, Chappell Roan moved back home to Missouri and began investing her time into becoming an independent artist. 

In 2021, she moved back to LA with a promise to herself to try one more year in the city before quitting. Luckily, soon after during the summer, “Pink Pony Club” made its rounds on TikTok and other social media platforms, officially launching her into the public's focus. 

Our Midwest Princess Takes Flight

Chappell Roan grew to be one of the biggest music icons in the current pop culture. Roan’s popularity initially grew from opening for Olivia Rodrigo. According to Us Weekly, she began opening for Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour in the United States and Canada in early 2024. People who loved Olivia Rodrigo but had never heard Chappell Roan’s music before were mesmerized by her look and energy on stage. Songs like “Hot to Go!” became increasingly popular because of the tour and continued to spread on platforms like TikTok. Billboard mentions that within one week, Chappell Roan’s streams went up more than 30 percent. The Guts tour drastically changed the trajectory of Chappell Roan’s entire career.

Roan would go on to release “Good Luck, Babe!”, which put her in the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and would get numerous Grammy nominations in 2025, along with her album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess”. Because of the immense response to her album, Roan won Best New Artist at the 2025 Grammy Awards.

Due to her skyrocketing popularity, Roan’s first experience playing at a festival was at none other than one of the biggest and most popular music festivals in the country, Coachella. When asked by Vogue about the inspiration behind her set, Roan responds, “What if Paris Hilton and James St. James or Walt Cassidy became one and put on a drag show?”. That description describes her unique and flamboyant style that attracts audiences to her music and performances.

As her fame grew, Roan began to make more pop-culture appearances. On November 2nd, 2024, Roan took the stage at Saturday Night Live just days before the 2024 presidential election. The episode was not only popular due to timing, but also because Roan performed her never-before-heard song, “The Giver”. Fans did not even know the name yet, so the premiere of the song was very shocking.

Our Midwest Princess Flew Too Close to the Sun

Chappell Roan’s rise to fame was almost too fast to comprehend. It seemed like overnight this artist was playing festivals with crowds of hundreds of people, like the one at Lollapalooza in 2024. Understandably, Roan struggled to adapt to this insta fame. Seemingly overnight, she was an internet sensation, and everyone had opinions on who and what she should be. Obsessive fans started reaching out to her family members or confronting her out in public. According to an interview with Rolling Stones Magazine in 2024, many of the fans that were reaching out to her were not just happy to thank her or compliment her music. One man berated her at the airport for refusing to sign an autograph. Another grabbed her at the bar and kissed her. When her father’s phone number was leaked online, she had had enough. She released a video on Tiktok and Instagram attempting to set boundaries with fans. The response was mixed, with many thinking she was ungrateful for not taking the time to meet with fans and straight up telling them not to interact with her if they see her on the street. 

That video set off an unfortunate chain reaction that led to Roan facing mega backlash from her fans online. Even people who weren’t her fans were coming out of the woodwork to say that Chappell Roan had no media training or didn’t deserve to be so popular if she wasn’t grateful for her fans. In reality, she was trying to cope with the stresses of being an international pop star over the course of what seemed like a couple of months, even though she had been an independent artist for quite some time. While it’s true that Roan’s video wasn’t the gentlest, it was made out of defensiveness towards a fanbase that was becoming very aggressive. It was like they didn’t consider her to be a real person anymore, since she was so famous. 

Alas, this was just the start of the controversies for Roan over the last two years. Eventually, the pushback from that video died down a bit, and her relations with fans seemed to improve. She started interacting with the more respectful fans again, on her own terms. Then, she went on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. Most of the episode was fine and gave insights into Chappell’s difficulties managing her personal life and her professional life. She talks about how many times it was difficult to see where one stopped and the other began. In true vulnerability, she talked about how much she felt she gave up by being this famous and how much you don’t realize it’s going to cost. However, she also talked about how people are scared of her now, which the internet did not take kindly to. Many thought this comment just highlighted her ungratefulness; in their minds, she was mean so of course they were afraid of her. 

To further complicate matters, Roan also commented about motherhood talking about how all of her friends that have kids are in hell and that no one seems happy. The mothers came out of the woodwork to attack her for this statement, even though it seems to be more of a critique on the unsupportive systems in place than about the mothers themselves. Once again though, people just saw a girl alienating her fans with something else that she said. Since the interview occurred in April, that controversy seems to have died down as well. As Chappell continues to put out new music and perform in her elaborate costumes, she seems to distract her fans from why they were mad at her in the first place. 

Chappell Roan represents a very specific group, even though her fanbase is quite large. As a queer icon who dresses in drag for a massive audience, even bringing on local drag queens to start some of her shows, she has made a name for herself as LGBTQ+ representation. Even her opening tag line, “your favorite artist’s favorite artist,” is inspired by a line from the drag queen Sasha Colby (“your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen”). Despite what her intentions might’ve been, drag is inherently political. It is rooted in resistance and freedom of expression centered very deeply on the queer experience. Her costuming is very specific. She relies on a lot of powerful iconography with political roots. For example, she dressed like Joan of Arc for her performance at the VMAs. Some of her other costumes actively pay homage to past drag queens and other queer figures. That’s why when Roan fell completely silent on politics during the Harris/Trump campaigns, many people were frustrated with her cherry-picked political stands. The drag queen Plane Jane even called Roan’s usage of drag “performative.”

This controversy is the one that her fandom is currently in at the moment. Since the political sphere now is so controversial and challenging for so many people, a lot of fans are on edge by the fact that the people they support and admire could be standing for administrations that are actively harming thousands of people. It makes a lot of listeners hesitant to stream any artist who hasn’t made their stance crystal clear. In this case, it’s made even more disappointing by the fact that Chappell Roan has made her entire brand off of gay culture and identity, many of which are actively being pursued by current politics. Because of her rapid success however, it is likely that she will find a way to succeed with the press and her fans; it just might be hell to get there if the controversies keep building.

Authors: Morgan Baker, Delaney Steber, Kiersten Holland

Works Cited

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