Chappell Roan shares new single ‘The Subway’
Chappell Roan has finally released her highly anticipated next single, ‘The Subway’.
The star has recently risen to fame over the last 18 months thanks to her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which served up addictive, sugary queer anthems with impressively large vocals. Now, Roan has returned with a slower track that is no less addictive but imbued with a wistful sense of yearning.
‘The Subway’ opens with the words, “I saw your green hair/beauty mark next to your mouth / There on the subway / I nearly had a breakdown.” Roan here describes New York’s Statue of Liberty, so the muse of her new song is likely to be a New York native.
The Grammy-winner has long teased the single. In the video for her last country-pop single, ‘The Giver,’ Roan displayed a menu screen that included the titles of several unreleased songs. Alongside ‘The Subway’, she teased songs titled ‘To Be Yours’ and ‘Read & Make Out’.
Chappell first performed the song live at the Governor’s Ball Music Festival on June 9th. At the same festival, Olivia Rodrigo introduced David Byrne as a special guest during her headline set. Later, on July 8th, Roan was spotted filming the music video accompanying the track in New York.
After receiving much unwarranted online hate and harassment over the last year, the ‘Pink Pony Club’ singer has recently hit back at online trolls by being clear and insistent about setting boundaries with the media. She said, “I cannot bear people saying I’m something I’m not. That’s what’s really hard online. People just assume you’re the villain.”
She then said of online, who remain disgruntled no matter what she says or does in public, “Do you want me to just get to the point where I become agoraphobic? Or so stressed out, or so anxious to perform? You want me to get to that point? Because if I don’t say anything, I will.”
This summer, Roan is headlining a number of festivals across Europe, including Reading and Leeds in England. She will also play two huge headline dates at the Royal Highland Showgrounds in Edinburgh in August.
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