When you think country music, you probably don’t think Chappell Roan, but in just a few days she’ll be the latest pop star to try her hand at country music, and surprisingly enough, she’s got more country roots than you might expect.
Yesterday the “Hot To Go!” and “Pink Pony Club” singer announced she was releasing a “country” song on March 13th titled “The Giver”, which she’d previously debuted on SNL back in November.
She did clarify this doesn’t mean she was committing to a full on country album, just putting out a song that was inspired by her upbringing in small town Missouri:
“‘The Giver.’ OUT 8pm et 3.13. Daniel Nigro and I wrote this together and it was so fun!!! We’ve never done a country song and I have such a special place in my heart for country music. I grew up listening to it every morning and afternoon on my school bus and had it swirling around me at bon fires, grocery stores and karaoke bars.
Many people have asked if this means I’m making a country album??? My answer is.. hmm right now I’m just making songs that make me feel happy and fun and The Giver is my take on cuntry xoxo may the classic country divas lead their genre, I am just here to twirl and do a little gay yodel for y’all.”
I’m not going to pretend that I’m not a little bit excited… hate me if you want but Chappell Roan’s music is awesome and really brings something different to a pop scene that (from my very limited exposure) seems to have grown a bit stale in recent years. “Femininomenon” is a straight banger and I’ll hear no further opinions, but I don’t expect the studio version of “The Giver” to be some steel and fiddle heavy traditional country song, but something at home in the pop-heavy radio sound that still remains popular despite all the fantastic music being made by independent artists.
The SNL preview gave 100% Shania Twain vibes:
Chappell Roan’s full hq performance of ‘The Giver’, her new cuntry single, live on SNL! 🤍 pic.twitter.com/NdKLmqXRpw
— best of chappell roan (@bestofchappell) November 3, 2024
However, it turns out that her stage name (no, Chappell Roan is not her actual name) was taken from her grandfather’s favorite song, which just so happens to be a staple of early, traditional country music.
How Chappell Roan Got Her Name
Back in 2022, Chappell Roan, real name Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, did an interview with Cherwell, the student newspaper for Oxford. “Pink Pony Club” had been released as a single just a few months prior and she was still independent, having worked at a donut shop most of the previous year. The interviewer notes that she only had 28.7 thousand followers on Instagram at the time, which I mention just to give perspective on where she was at in her career. (Currently she has 6.8 million)
Honestly, the interview is interesting because it’s a college student asking a quickly rising but somewhat unknown independent artist about their music, which lead to some great answers, but right at the jump Roan is asked where her stage name came from and the response surprised me:
“I have never felt super connected to my real name Kayleigh. My grandfather’s name was Dennis K. Chappell, so I took Chappell in his honor. Before he passed away in 2016 due to brain cancer, I told him that I was going to be Chappell for him.
Roan came from his favorite song, which was called “The Strawberry Roan”, an old Western song about a pinkish red horse. It’s a very sentimental name.”
An ode to her grandfather and his favorite country song? That’s pretty awesome…
“The Strawberry Roan” was written by Curley Fletcher and was actually first published as a poem titled “The Outlaw Broncho” in 1915. It was turned into a song and became widely known in the early 1930’s when it was performed in the Broadway play Green Grow the Lilacs. It’s since been covered by a number of artists and was included in the Western Writers of America’s Top 100 Western Songs of All-Time list, checking in at number 28.
Most notably, Marty Robbins covered it on his iconic Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs album that featured genre shaping hits such as “Big Iron”, “They’re Hanging Me Tonight”, and “El Paso”.
So she choose her stage name in part due to a country song, grew up in small town Missouri, and was raised in what she described as a conservative, Christian household? Sure seems like Chappell’s got a lot of country and country adjacent roots to pull from if she ever wants to make a real run at country music.
But hey, Post Malone, Beyonce, Lana Del Rey, Joe Jonas, and Machine Gun Kelly have all, for better or worse (mostly worse), dipped their toe in the country music waters, so there’s certainly a lane for Chappell Roan if she gets the urge.
With that being said, I’ll most likely keep going back to her pop music…
