NEED TO KNOW
Chappell Roan is opening up about her feelings.
In a conversation with SZA for Interview Magazine, published on Tuesday, June 17, the “Pink Pony Club” singer spoke about her feelings regarding the public’s perception of her.
SZA, 35, asked Roan, 27, if she “gave a f— about the backlash” she’s received in the past. Roan said she didn’t for some time — “until people started hating me for me and not for my art.”
“When it’s not about my art anymore, it’s like, ‘They hate me because I’m Kayleigh, not because they hate the songs that I make.’ That’s when it changed,” said Roan, whose real name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz.
The “Scorsese Baby Daddy” singer added that naysayers “literally don’t know Kayleigh.”
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“But when things are taken out of context, people assume so much about you. I didn’t realize I’d care so much,” Roan continued. “When it comes to my art, I’m like, ‘Bitch, you can think whatever you want. You are allowed to hate it with all your guts.'”
“But when it comes to me and my personality,” she added, “it’s like, “Damn. Am I the most insufferable bitch of our generation?'”
SZA was able to commiserate with Roan about feeling hurt from the public’s disapproval. “It makes me cry,” Roan concluded. “I don’t know if it will ever feel okay to hear someone say something really hateful about me.”
Roan received criticism in February 2025 for her Grammys acceptance speech upon winning the Best New Artist award. At the time, she called for recording companies to offer artists “a livable wage and health care.”
“I told myself, if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists,” she said at the 2025 Grammys.
“Because I got signed so young, I got signed as a minor, and when I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt and like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in a pandemic and could not afford health insurance,” continued Roan.
The “Good Luck, Babe!” singer called it “devastating” to be so committed to her music while also being “betrayed by the system.”
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Music executive Jeff Rabhan wrote a controversial op-ed in response to Roan’s speech, and she called him out, challenging him to donate $25K to “struggling dropped artists.”
She also claimed she had three villain eras in the past year during a May episode of Outlaws with TS Madison.
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“I think that I’ve had like three [villain eras] in the past nine months probably just because I was the new girl in the pop game, where I was like, ‘I don’t give a f— what you say to these girls who have been doing this since they were 10 and have been told this is okay, how you’re treated,'” she said at the time.
Roan clarified that since she became famous in her twenties, she’s experiencing “what it’s like to be an adult and how to be respected in a job.”
