Culture Crash: Love Taylor Swift & Billie Eillish? Why You’ll Love Chappell Roan

This year has been a feast of new music, but many observers online have agreed that even releases from some of the biggest pop stars in the world are full of melancholy or downbeat music. Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department is, well, tortured, and while Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft has its euphoric moments of dance break relief, it’s also full of haunting melodies heartwrenching lyrics.

Enter Chappell Roan, your favorite artist’s favorite artist. Roan has been around for a bit, having released her first single back in 2017. But she released her debut full-length album just last year and has risen steadily to prominence ever since thanks to her fun, infectious music full of dancing synths and glittery choruses. Her album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, is chalk-full of bops, jams, and other types of singalongs, with a few ballads stirred in for good measure. Red Wine Supernova has been something of a Spotify sensation, racking up more than 85 million streams, and on tour, her dance-along “Hot to Go” tears the house down.

**A big part of Roan’s popularity explosion in 2024 was that she opened for Olivia Rodrigo, exposing plenty of Gen Z fans and TikTok users to her most fun songs, and Roan wisely capitalized on that popularity by releasing an undeniable new single called “Good Luck, Babe!” which has to be on the shortlist of songs of the summer with more than 145 million Spotify streams.

In a year with plenty of slow songs, sad ballads, and lyrics about crying at the gym, Chappell Roan’s small but mighty catalog of music is exactly what the doctor ordered when you’re looking for fun music to listen to before a night out.