Chappell Roan Confronts The Sickness Of Modern Fandom
Over the past few years, I’ve become increasingly hesitant to identify as a fan of any living artist. There are plenty of artists whose work I like, or even love, but the entire concept of being a fan, and what the act of fandom entails, has shifted in ways I find both alienating and disturbing. What was once a straightforward expression of admiration—I’m such a fan!—has lately become more like a claim of obsessive entitlement.
Fans do not simply enjoy an album; they are in love with the person who created the work. Fans follow the celebrity object of their affection on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and watch their every move. Fans join forums with other fans, who all believe that the celebrity is communicating with them via a series of riddles and hidden messages, which sometimes they really are.
I’m not the only one made uncomfortable by this situation. Artists, unsurprisingly, are expressing their distaste for the consequences of modern fan culture. Indie pop darling Chappell Roan posted two videos to TikTok yesterday that went megaviral. In the two videos, which combined have more than 15 million views, Roan speaks straight to the camera, imploring her fans to realize that she is not an object for them to play with, and more importantly, that they do not actually know her at all.
“I don’t care that abuse and harassment, stalking, whatever, is a normal thing to do to people who are famous or a little famous or whatever,” Roan says. “It’s weird how people think that you know a person just 'cause you see them online, and you listen to the art they make. That’s fucking weird!”
A number of the comments on these videos were from people replying to this plea for privacy with the exact sort of behavior that prompted it. It’s the cost of being famous, they said. Cry me a river, they said. We made you, they said. Maybe that’s because it is rare for a celebrity to set a firm boundary on how their fans interact with them. She is refreshingly direct—there’s no perfunctory hedging about how of course she is grateful for the attention, no self-effacing asides where she explains how she knows what a privilege this all is. She is not going on Oprah, teary-eyed, to explain how she has been hurt. She is looking her fans right in their eyes and telling them to knock it off.
The comments for the videos have since been turned off. The boundary is clear. The question is whether or not the fans will be able to respect it.
Roan’s rise to fame has been rapid, and somewhat unexpected. After signing to Atlantic Records as a teen, the label dropped her after the release of her single “Pink Pony Club” in 2020. The album she’s blowing up for this year, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, was released in September of 2023, to some critical acclaim but not a ton of attention. What did get her attention was opening on Olivia Rodrigo’s sell-out Guts Tour last summer, along with memorable performances on NPR’s Tiny Desk and at Coachella. She released a new single in April, in the midst of this spike in attention, called “Good Luck, Babe,” that peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100.
A chart released by the company Chartmetric shows her monthly Spotify listens rocketing over the past year like a hockey stick graph. Currently, she has over 30 million listens per month. A few months ago, she had only 1 million. Her song “HOT TO GO!” with its helpful spelling and arm-centric coordinated dance, has become equally popular among Peloton moms, sorority girls, and alt lesbians. Many people believe that the camo Harris-Walz campaign hats are inspired by Roan’s camo Midwest Princess hats.
Roan's rise has been meteoric, and she has shared already how hard this has been on her. During a June show in North Carolina, she cried on stage. “I just want to be honest with the crowd and I just feel a little off today because I think that my career has just kind of gone really fast, and it’s really hard to keep up,” she said. “And so I’m just being honest that I’m just having a hard time today.” In June, she told host Drew Afualo on the podcast The Comment Section that “People have started to be freaks—like, follow me and know where my parents live, and where my sister works. All this weird shit.”
by Kelsey McKinney, Defector | Read more:
Video: HOT TO GO/YouTube
