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Chappell Roan.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesChappell RoanThe road to fame and success was not without its bumps – including a stint working at a drive-through donut shop in Missouri.
After being dropped by her label following the 2020 coronavirus pandemic outages, Roan (real name Kayleigh Rose Amstutz) returned to her home state of Missouri to reset. While there, he learned a thing or two about hard work.
“It had an absolutely positive effect on me,” Roan said BBC’s Radio 1 in an interview published on Sunday, January 19, from her time working in a donut shop. “You have the knowledge of what it’s like to clean a public bathroom. That is very important.”
The singer used that year of experiences – which also included heartbreak – as a springboard launch her career. (Roan was first signed to a label in 2015, but it wasn’t until almost a decade later that her first album hit the airwaves.)
When Roan returned to Los Angeles, he gave himself a year to do it – and he did.
In 2022, she released four singles, including “Naked in Manhattan,” as a lead-up to her debut album, The Rise and Fall of the Princess of Mid Waleswhich fell in September 2023.
Roan’s fame rose shortly after his record was released thanks to his 2024 single, “Good Luck, Babe!” which was originally supposed to be titled, “Good Luck, Jane!”
“I wanted it to be about me falling in love with my best friend, and then her being like, ‘Ha ha ha, I don’t like you back, I like boys,'” revealed the musician on Sunday. “And he was like, ‘Okay, well, good luck with that, Jane.'”
Roan, who is an openly queer artist, never has abandon difficult subjects or stray from being herself. While that has caused some backlash, the singer is sticking to her guns.
“I think, to be honest, I’d be more successful if I was right wearing a muzzle,” he said with a laugh.
She noted that her choices were to taking time off for her mental health and to call out photographers at the 2024 MTV Awards for the claim that shouting insulting comments at the celebrities had hindered her success.
“If I overruled more of my basic instincts, where my heart goes, ‘Stop, stop, stop, you’re not right’, I’d be bigger,” claimed Roan. “I’d be a lot bigger … and I’d still be on tour right now.” (Roan refused to extend her journey in 2024 to protect her physical and mental health.)
Her inability to silence her own inner voices has not dissuaded Roan earning six Grammy Award nominations at the upcoming February ceremony, including Best New Artist. But for her, recognition is not all that matters.
“If I can look back and say, ‘I didn’t crumble under the pressure of expectation, and I didn’t stand up to being abused or blackmailed’, (then) at least I stayed true to my heart,” Roan finished.