Album Life Coaching: A Review of Chappell Roan´s Debut And Queer Mentorship
My little, prima-hermana loves Chappell Roan. She thinks that Chappell is the speaker of her soul. Whenever we drive around Puerto Rico, acting like the fierce Queens we are, she pops in Chappell, and says, ¨Woah, her LYRICS!¨ This is a major feat! Listening to verses can feel like a rare activity between how good the beat sounds and how little you REALLY want to know about what you are repeating. Yet, Chappell is quickly rising as a young woman that has totally found the wildness of feeling lost.
In her debut, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Chappell has been described as a Technicolor Fever Dream: a cinematic soundtrack to queer love, youthful rebellion, and the natural existentialism born from realizing that how you were raised has, actually, confining to who you are. Chappell approaches, like a festival, the feeling that all you knew is a dark veil to all that you are supposed to know about yourself. The result is an album that many will hold onto like that Chandler Bing meme where he clutches the record and looks like he’s eaten the sweetest slice of cherry pie.
BOMBASTIC! FANTASTIC! ECSTATIC! AESTHETIC! These are some of the words I would use to describe how Chappell uses both her vocal and rhythmic compositions to make them all seem like a film roll. Honestly, this album could be the sequel Lady Bird. Greta Gerwig might as well direct this young, queen, and that means something to listeners. It is not light to hate yourself, and be raised in a community/ family that, whether intentional or not, is not teaching you self-love. Chappell takes on the hard road of learning to love yourself by becoming your own teacher, and that converts this whole album into a queer mentor for kids that really need it like, my prima-hermana.
