In one of several headline-grabbing moments from her epic set at New York’s Governors Ball festival on Sunday, fast-rising singer Chappell Roan revealed that she turned down an offer to perform at a White House Pride event.
“In response to the White House, who asked me to perform for Pride,” Chappell Roan, dressed in a glammed-up Statue of Liberty costume, said directly into a video camera that was broadcasting onto the festival’s giant screens. “We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.” A rep for the singer confirmed to Variety that the White House had reached out to Roan via her management and was declined.
Referencing her costume, she continued later, “I am in drag of the biggest queen of all,” she said to cheers and laughs. “But in case you had forgotten what’s etched on my pretty little toes, ‘Give me your tired, your poor; your huddled masses yearning to breath free,’” she said, referencing the often-quoted poem written on the 1903 bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. “That means freedom and trans rights, that means freedom and women’s rights, and it esp means freedom for all peoples in oppressed” — she paused, apparently tearing up — “for all oppressed people in occupied territories.”
However, the seriousness of her statement was slightly undercut by her abrupt change in tone when saying “Thank you! OK, we’re gonna do ‘Hot to Go!’’”
Her performance, which lit up social media on Sunday evening, began with an “Am I Gay?” quiz posted on the video screens, saw her take the stage by emerging from a giant fake apple in her Statue of Liberty costume, and performing her second new song to be released this year, called “Subway.”
A mid-tempo ballad, the song is more low-key than her “Good Luck Babe!” single released in April but has swooning, synth-driven verses and continues the insecure vein of some of her lyrics, concluding with the line, “I’m just another girl on the subway.”
While Roan’s star has been rising rapidly over the past few months, it was several years in the making. Born in Missouri, she moved to Los Angeles and signed with Atlantic Records as a 17-year-old but the deal did not work out and she returned home. She began collaborating with Olivia Rodrigo co-writer Daniel Nigro (before he’d met Rodrigo), signed with his label and pacted with Island Records in 2022. She began touring and played a galvanizing set at New York’s Webster Hall in March of last year, and released her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” in September. This year saw the release of her most successful song to date, the synth-pop anthem “Good Luck Babe!,” and played the Coachella festival in April. Yet until recent weeks her rise was unusually gradual, speading by word of mouth, and she has been widely embraced by the queer community, of which she is a proud member.