We can’t get enough of the singer’s new track The Subway
BY LUCY CHUNG, IMAGE VIA YOUTUBE/ CHAPPELL ROAN
Chappell Roan has awoken yearning sapphics across the globe with her epic pièce de résistance, The Subway.
One year after debuting the track during her set at the 2024 Governor’s Ball Music Festival, the pop icon has finally released the studio version of the fan-favourite song. The unreleased version amassed over 100,000 TikTok videos as Roan’s fans closely anticipated the piece’s release.
The Midwestern princess takes her listeners on a sonic journey through the streets of New York as she is haunted by the green-haired ghost of her ex-lover. The theatrical and percussive style of Dan Nigro enlivens the visceral heartbreak in Chappell’s lyrics.
In the music video directed by Amber Grace Johnson, Roan is seen with dramatic, long red locks, catching glimpses of her ex-lover’s equally lengthy neon hair. The hair nods to her visual brand, yet equally appears to serve as a metaphor for the belief that hair holds memories.
The eye-catching hair pieces featured in the video have become part of a guerrilla-style marketing campaign for the lesbian pop singer. Fans have spotted Roan’s luscious locks across the city, from rattling subway carts to fire escapes in Hudson. The singer has gone to new lengths to immerse her fanbase in the world of her devastating heartbreak anthem.
The artist has included The Subway in various live sets since her initial performance, yet many fans have long awaited the track’s official release. On Instagram, Roan explained the delay as partly due to the whirlwind circumstances of the past year, which has seen the starlet catapulted to mainstream success.
“Obviously, not knowing this really chaotic year would follow the performance, it didn’t really leave me the time to build the world the song deserved,” she wrote. “But finally we are here. I def ripped my hair out trying to figure out the puzzle of how this song should feel musically and visually and emotionally, luckily there are some to spare. Thank you for sticking it out for a whole year. It was worth it to make sure everything was absolutely right.”
The music video follows her announcing a series of pop-up shows scheduled for September and October of this year. She has dubbed this pop-up run Visions Of Damsels And Other Dangerous Things. This includes four consecutive nights at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, N.Y., two at Museum and Memorial Park in Kansas City, M.O., and two at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, C.A.
Roan confirmed in the announcement that she is working on the follow-up to The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess. Though she shared with Vogue, “The second project doesn’t exist yet,”
“There is no album. There is no collection of songs… It took me five years to write the first one, and it’s probably going to take at least five to write the next.”
Well, Roan, until you’re just another girl on the subway – the sapphics patiently await your next masterpiece.
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