Chappell Roan Gets Vulnerable With Fans About Newfound Fame: ‘I’m Having a Hard Time Today’

Nobody’s having a summer quite like Chappell Roan.

Ever since Coachella 2024, it feels as if the entire world has memorized the “Hot to Go” choreography and all the words to “Pink Pony Club.” Roan was hardly obscure before that star-making moment (there’s a reason she booked Coachella in the first place), but the aftermath has been intense. Her April single “Good Luck, Babe!” was Roan’s first to break through the Billboard Top 100, and her September 2023 album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, recently hit the top 10 of Billboard’s album sales chart for the first time.

On June 12, Bonnaroo announced it would be moving her upcoming performance from a tent to a main outdoor stage to accommodate a larger crowd. After all, drone footage from her Boston Calling performance in late May looked a lot more like something you’d expect to see from a particularly exciting headliner.

Chappell Roan performs during the 2024 Boston Calling Music Festival on May 26, 2024.

Taylor Hill/Getty Images

The point is, Chappell Roan has a lot going on at the moment, and it’s starting to catch up with her. On June 12, the 26-year-old Missouri-born artist got real about her newfound fame with fans in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I just want to be honest with the crowd and I just feel a little off today because I think that my career has just kind of gone really fast, and it’s really hard to keep up,” she said through tears during her Midwest Princess Tour performance at the Red Hot Amphitheater. “And so I’m just being honest that I’m just having a hard time today.”

After raucous cheers from the crowd, she continued, “So I’m sorry that—I’m not trying to, like, give you like a lesser show. It’s just like, there’s a lot on my mind.”