- Chappell Roan has endured backlash on social media for sharing her political opinions and canceling shows.
- The criticism comes at a pivotal moment in her extremely rapid rise to fame.
Chappell Roan has been dominating the pop-culture news cycle all year — but she's at a critical moment in her career where her next step forward should be handled with care.
Roan is still a relatively fresh face in mainstream pop music, but her ascent to fame and ubiquity happened at a breakneck pace: In only a year, she's gone from a singer with a niche fandom to someone who's had an entire "Saturday Night Live" sketch written about her.
When she released her presciently titled debut album "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess" in September 2023, it didn't make enough noise to chart on the Billboard 200. But months later, after a slew of viral performances, Roan's album began climbing the charts, eventually reaching No. 2 in August 2024, bested only by Taylor Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department." Roan has also managed to place seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including "Good Luck Babe!" in the top 5. She performed the hit single at the VMAs, where she also won best new artist, and she's scheduled to make her "SNL" debut next month. By all accounts, a star has been born.
But Roan's astonishing sprint to stardom recently hit a series of snags that, when taken together, threaten to derail her ascent.
It started in August, when Roan shared a pair of videos on TikTok, attempting to draw hard boundaries with her fans — and eschewing all the old rules of pop-star decorum.
@chappellroan Do not assume this is directed at someone or a specific encounter. This is just my side of the story and my feelings.
♬ original sound - chappell roan
"I don't give a fuck if you think it's selfish of me to say no for a photo or for your time or for a hug," she said. "That's not normal! That's weird!"
Though Roan's core message about the "creepy," invasive side of fandom won her sympathy from the media and many fellow artists, her blunt delivery triggered a minor uproar on social media. Many memes and tweets interpreted Roan's tone as condescending, hysterical, or even hostile.
Less than a month later, Roan found herself in a similar predicament when she tried to clarify her stance on US politics.
In an interview with The Guardian, Roan said she didn't "feel pressured" to endorse either presidential candidate, and instead encouraged her fans to educate themselves about down-ballot races. "There's problems on both sides," she said.
That quote was subsequently clipped and shared widely on social media, where uproar promptly ensued. Some critics went so far as to suggest that Roan is secretly right-wing (her long-standing and passionate support for LGBTQ+ rights, especially trans rights, and other progressive policies would indicate otherwise), but Roan also received well-balanced criticism about the dangers of "bothsidesing."
In response, Roan returned to TikTok and chastised people for taking her words out of context. Still, she did not clarify if she would be voting in the presidential election, only saying she would not vote for former President Donald Trump. (Roan, 26, belongs to a key demographic for a Democratic victory, but according to recent polls, about half of Gen Zers say they don't plan to vote.)
In a follow-up video the next morning, Roan seemed to be nearing a breaking point. "I just woke up," she said, "to people just skewing it even more."
@chappellroan Im done talking about it. If you dont get what im saying from this, its a lost cause. And im not forcing you to agree with me. This is my statement. Have a good day
♬ original sound - chappell roan
As has become her calling card, Roan delivered the opposite of a polished, pre-prepared statement that we're used to seeing from celebrities in hot water. Visibly irritated and unrehearsed, Roan insisted that she was right to withhold her endorsement.
"Fuck Trump, for fucking real, but fuck some of the shit that has gone down in the Democratic party," she said.
Roan did finally say that she'd vote for the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, come November — but muddied her concession by mispronouncing Harris' first name, which struck many people as hypocritical alongside Roan's other comments that urged her fans to "learn about who they're voting for."
"She is not filtering anything that she's saying," one TikToker said in a lengthy critique of Roan's public relations style, which has over 1.5 million views. "People who would normally agree with what she's saying are so put off by the wording that they're not agreeing with her anymore, and they are turning on her."
As debates surrounding Roan's videos and "subpar communication skills" intensified, she decided to withdraw from the All Things Go Music Festival just 29 hours before her first of two scheduled performances.
"Things have gotten overwhelming over the past few weeks and I am really feeling it," she wrote on her Instagram Story. "I feel pressures to prioritize a lot of things right now and I need a few days to prioritize my health."
The festival's organizers and other performers were uniformly supportive, but online reactions were predictably mixed, ranging from compassionate to exasperated to vicious. It didn't help that it was the second time Roan had canceled shows with little notice. (The first time was in August due to "scheduling conflicts," presumably VMA rehearsals, which also prompted a minor uproar at the time.)
two things can be simultaneously true:
— nightmary (@marybradway) September 27, 2024
1. chappell roan deserves to be healthy/well and feel safe performing
2. dropping out of all things go 1 day before the festival fucking SUCKS and is a really shitty to the fans who spent a lot of money to see her
Even those who defended Roan were discouraged by her decision. Consumer confidence took a hit; some said the festivalgoers should get refunds, while others said they'd be nervous to buy tickets for future concerts lest Roan get caught in another social media firestorm and cancel on them again.
"In a sense, Roan was a victim of context collapse," Nate Jones wrote for Vulture. "But her decision to back out of this weekend's concerts in the wake of the controversy points to misplaced priorities, an artist who seems more concerned with anonymous commenters than her own fan base."
As Roan returns to the stage this week for the final stops on her "Midwest Princess" tour, Business Insider spoke to two PR professionals about the best strategies she could employ to maintain her momentum — and her mental health.
Protecting Roan's mental health should be the priority in the short term — and it will help in the long run
Roan, who's been open about living with bipolar disorder, is hardly the first performer to cancel a show over mental health concerns. A-listers like Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and Shawn Mendes have all done just that, as have indie darlings like Arlo Parks, Wet Leg, and Santigold in recent years. A 2021 peer-reviewed report from the Journal of Psychiatric research found that touring musicians had elevated levels of clinical depression and suicidal ideation compared to the general population.
As the social tides have shifted toward transparency, openly discussing mental health has not only become normalized, but celebrated. According to Erik Bernstein, a communications and reputation expert, this shift is reflected in the modern approach to entertainment PR.
"If you want to be responsible, and let's be real, if everybody involved wants to keep making money, we need to help people stay healthy," Bernstein said.
Roan is represented by Biz3, a PR company based in Chicago and Los Angeles. When reached for comment, founder Kathryn Frazier said she doesn't work directly with Roan and wouldn't discuss the "personal matters" of her company's clients. However, she has spoken at length about prioritizing mental health while guiding artists through the music industry.
"I've always, and I do it a lot more now, help people with stress, anxiety, impostor syndrome, insecurity and compare and despair, along with pitching you and trying to get you pieces of press or helping you find management," Frazier told Billboard earlier this year. "You can't really thrive and make a career grow if someone at their core is unstable or not nourished or depleted and hanging on by a thread."
Jaclyn Carter, the Senior Vice President of the public relations firm Shore Fire Media, echoed this approach, saying publicists at her firm are prepared to offer options to artists who need a break from the pressures and demands of the spotlight.
"If clients are struggling in that area, we try to direct them to resources," she said. She often points clients to Backline, an organization that provides mental health resources like on-site intensives for music industry professionals. "You go and leave your phone, and you really get to the root of how you're feeling and how to move forward," Carter told BI of Backline's workshops.
"We aren't the trained professionals, but we can get you to those places," she added.
Even if canceling shows could drive away fans, it's worth the risk
A key responsibility for a PR professional is weighing the potential outcomes of every decision, Bernstein said.
When Roan decided to drop out of All Things Go, perhaps her team warned her that it could fuel the backlash. But on the other hand, if an artist is panicked about getting onstage, that could have far more dire repercussions.
"If she's really feeling bad, sometimes it's better to say, 'Let's just take the hit and cancel the show,'" Bernstein said. The hope is to get her recharged and refocused, so it doesn't happen again. "Canceling shows all the time, that's a bad look," he admitted.
Bernstein said he would look at real metrics — have her streaming numbers dropped? Have her album sales plummeted? — to guide this kind of decision, rather than reactions on social media.
"Obviously, the internet today is crafted to make you feel like everyone's yelling at you," Bernstein said. "Sometimes, when we look at the data, it's people who were never our customers or our target demo to start with. It's maybe not as significant a number of people as we thought."
Indeed, this week, Roan hit No. 1 on Billboard's Artist 100 chart for the first time in her career. "Midwest Princess" also reached No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart.
It's possible that Roan has reached the rare level of success and acclaim where alienating her loudest dissenters wouldn't ruin her career.
"I think, especially when you're that big, who cares, right? You can lose a few," Bernstein said. "If these people are actually fans, they want you to keep making music, but they should also want you to keep living as a human being. And if people just want you to grind yourself down to nothing for their sake, then maybe those aren't the fans you want or need."
“I wish Chappell Roan could have timed her mental health crisis better so it benefited me :(“ THAT IS WHAT YALL LITERALLY SOUND LIKE
— julia dee ✨ (@juliadstarr) September 28, 2024
Carter agreed that some complaints are not worth engaging with, adding that concert cancellations are "inevitable" for any artist.
"Yes, there are consequences to canceling things. But I think the thing is, whenever you do cancel a show, no matter if it is the purest intention or the most selfish intention or whatever, there is always going to be somebody who does not understand," she said.
"That's the reality of having such an open book of social media," Carter added. "You are going to get hate, and sometimes, those people don't even live in that city or didn't even have a ticket. They're not affected in any way."
Ultimately, Carter said her job as a PR professional is to get the client to learn from the situation and adapt so they can "get ahead of it moving forward" — even if that just means prepping them to better handle backlash in the future.
"Every case is so different when you're looking at online hate, show cancellations, et cetera," Carter said. "Sometimes, you have to just say, 'This is how it is,' and wave the white flag."
Maybe Roan should pull back from social media — but that's ultimately her call
Roan has developed the habit of confronting every critique head-on, which tends to make the backlash cycle worse. As a result, many fans have suggested a simple solution to Roan's plight: log off.
Bernstein agreed that it helps to be discerning about real outrage versus routine internet drama, and it's generally better to let the latter slide.
"I do hope that the people around her are helping her recognize that you're just going to have your haters no matter what when you're a public figure," he said, suggesting that Roan's PR team could filter what she sees online.
"None of us should be sitting there at four in the morning just scrolling through hate," he said. "It's just not healthy and it's not sustainable. And then the temptation to post something dumb gets real high."
Plenty of celebrities have taken this "don't read the comments" approach, working with stricter and arguably savvier limits. Swift turned off Instagram comments years ago, Gomez has said she deleted the app from her phone, and others have quit posting on social media altogether.
Still, it's not a publicist's decision whether Roan should reduce her online footprint or polish her public statements going forward. She already said she's "not afraid of the consequences for demanding respect."
Roan's brand has become synonymous with raw emotion and off-the-cuff honesty — and maybe that's how she wants to keep it, even if it continues to invite scrutiny.
"You're hitting the heart of a side of PR that doesn't get talked about much, and that's the people side of it," Bernstein explained. "It's not just about how we get you in the media, how we shape your image, but also, how do you want to be seen?"
"Does she want less discussion around these areas? There are strategies we can employ there," he continued. "Does she want to continue to give her authentic self in public? Maybe we tweak some messaging and find an in-between. But if this is what she wants, maybe we just get people used to the idea that this is what they're buying. Take it or leave it."