To make it as a pop star in the age of TikTok, you need a few tricks up your sleeve.
Firstly, you need to have an ambiguous gender. Think Sam Smith. He revitalized his career after a lull by putting on a pair of chaps and calling himself a “they/them.”
Next you need to hate your own fans. Seriously, look at Doja Cat. After mocking her fans for labeling themselves “Kittenz” in a post that said, “If you call yourself a ‘Kitten’ or f***ing ‘Kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house,” she lost 237,758 followers in one weekend but spent weeks as the main character of social media. Lorde has spent years inviting her fans to pay ludicrous ticket prices to attend concerts, where she loudly shushes them if they attempt to sing along to their favorite songs.
The third trick is creating boundaries. Long gone are the days that celebrity comes with consequences. The list of stars who have denounced or kept their fans at arms length is huge and growing: Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and Mitski, to name a few.
There is a new pop star on the block who has, so far, excelled at all of these. Before a few weeks ago, I had never heard of her, and yet now, I seem to know every gripe that Chappell Roan has ever had. Her incessant complaining over the last few weeks has even earned her the admittedly not very creative nickname of Chappell Moan. But the Missouri-born singer’s reaction to stardom has divided opinion, with one camp saying that celebrities shouldn’t have to endure the more intense side of “stan” culture and the other asking, well, what did you expect?
It all started last year when, after making music for the last 10 years but never having anything quite hit the mark, Chappell Roan, real name Kayleigh Amstutz, released her first album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and went off on tour as Olivia Rodrigo’s opening act. Roan, who identifies as a drag queen but is a woman who was born female and dresses as a female, has seen her popularity boom. She has been struggling ever since, but her displeasure culminated last month when she released two videos on TikTok dressing down her fans for overstepping boundaries.
“I don’t care that abuse and harassment — stalking, whatever — is a normal thing to do to people who are famous or a little famous, whatever,” she said. “I don’t care that it’s normal. I don’t care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job, the career field I’ve chosen. That does not make it OK. That doesn’t make it normal. Doesn’t mean I want it. Doesn’t mean I like it.”
According to Roan during an interview, indie singer Mitski emailed her a lengthy message saying, “I just wanted to humbly welcome you to the s***tiest exclusive club in the world, the club where strangers think you belong to them and they find and harass your family members.”
When the video addressed to her fans wasn’t enough, Roan went on to commit faux pas online and during interviews. While speaking to Rolling Stone, she seemingly chastised her fans for not following her for long enough.
“What’s so infuriating is how people are just now taking me seriously. Like, ‘You know what, b****? I’ve been doing this s*** and you’re just now catching up,’” she told one journalist before going on to say, “Part of me hopes I never have a hit again because then no one will ever expect anything from me again.”
The singer’s fans can’t seem to win. The ones who show devotion and ask for selfies are branded as entitled stalkers, and anyone else isn’t dedicated enough.
Roan’s bratty behavior seemed to peak Wednesday, though, after she shouted, “Shut the f*** up,” at a photographer on the red carpet at the VMAs. Video shows the star shouting at the photographer while pointing at him and later saying, “Don’t. Not me, b****.” According to some outlets, Roan had missed her slot for photographs and was being told to move along by photographers.
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Roan told interviewers on the carpet, “I think for someone who gets a lot of anxiety around people yelling at you, the carpet is horrifying, and I yelled back. I yelled back! You don’t get to yell at me like that.”
Well, that makes it OK then. Roan, like others of her generation, is allowed to do and say and shout at whatever and whomever she wants, as long as it is in the name of creating boundaries.
Kara Kennedy is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C.