Why did Chappell Roan made a song “Country Queer”?

And in the end too Chappell Roan gave himself to the country. Hear the new one The Giveras soon as you go out, to believe. “It is not necessarily means that I’m entering another phase of my career,” said the 27 -year -old American singer immediately, last month Ai Grammy as the best debutant artist After twelve perfect months, in which with his pop a little eighties he imposed himself all over the world (Good Luck, baby! And Pink Pony Club I’m hit from us too). In short, is it already time to change? “I don’t even know if a country record, I’m just writing the songs that make me feel good,” he added. Which are evidently country, however. And it is also good for her: her touch is perceived above the typical sounds of the genre, which are there, it is not a little. But what does all this mean?

It means that the times when one of the most traditional music in the United States are far it was a sort of Lost in Translation Outside of there, with artists from millions of copies within the borders that far from America were not even understood – a question of roots and language, of references that incomprehensible here. A few years ago, here, it would have been an announced suicide if a popstar on the launching pad as she had passed to the country, because a huge slice of international listeners would be precluded (or at least, the road would have been quite uphill). Now not, now the country has been cleared and digested by the European public, primarily that lover of pop, e The credit is by Taylor Swiftwho began to be noticed just as a gender singer -songwriter. For heaven’s sake, today of Country, in her, there is little: it has passed to an alternative electro-pop, but in the texts-in which at the time they had already contributed to inserting the perspective of a young woman, inside a music where the male point of view predominated-maintains the cinematographic writing style of the genre, without counting the aesthetic part, which remains (taking a ride at the concerts). And it’s not a little, not even here.

This is the premise, of course, then there is the close topicality, which tells another story again. Last year he came out Cowboy Carterthe disc in which Beyoncé also got hats and bootswith a more radical approach than that of Swift, that is, claiming the black rootswhere most of the country songwriters, including the same Swift, have been almost only white, for decades. Pull the air of revolutions, cultural battles. The result, beyond the undoubted merits, made noise in certain more closed environments, but has shown that there is space. And that The country, with the aura of sacredness that carries, can become an excellent terrain of clash and discovery.

Chappell Roan falls there, giving it instead its queer version. In fact, she is openly lesbian and, indeed, considers the project a Alter Ego Drag – The artist’s real name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutzbut the references to the imaginary queer are many – more brazen and self -confident with the girls, as well as carrying out a typical sensitivity of the Zeta generationlike when he asked fans confidentiality and respect for one’s private life (who agreed, a dynamic in some ways inconceivable for those who grew up with the culture of paparazzi and voyeurism). All this, here, feels like in The Giver. Who, he explained, “is my interpretation of the country: I leave the reins of the genre to the classic divas, I am here just to make piroette and a little gay Yodel for all of you». You said nothing.

Of course, everything is more intimate and personal than Beyoncé, but it is not said that it makes less noise. That Between LGBTQI+ and Country Communityin fact, is a difficult and never blossomed relationship At the mainstream level, with a few carbonari episodes, such as the homonymous album of the Lavender Country, a 1973 band (Daniele Cassandro tells them, in all of them strangenessin Flying discsreleased in 2024 for Edizioni Curci). The motto, in essence, was: We can love a culture that does not love us. Since then, little has changed, with the battles of the same community in the middle, the new sensitivity and small repositioning of the Country itself, considered “conservative” and “true Americans” That, net of certain difficulties in following the parable of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, everything, which in fact threw himself on Village People, has however adapted to the polarization of the US public opinion. Already Beyoncé’s choice, we said, made a lot of noise. Chappell Roan, with the audience of very young people who carry behind and his imagination deeply more than what The Giver Leave to understand (even if the video clip, which a little winks at the Village People who were, does its own), could succeed where the ancestors have failed.