Chappell Roan Uses Her Voice
The Best New Artist Used Her Platform to Speak out Against the Music Industry and It’s Treatment of Artists.
As she fumbled with her hat and notebook Chappell Roan delivered one of the greatest speeches in Awards Show history at this years Grammys with these words:
“Hello! Thank you to my fellow nominees, whose music got me through this past year. Brat was the best night of my life this year. My hat’s going to fall—it’s going to be OK. Thank you all who listened to get me here today…
I told myself if I ever won a Grammy, and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry, profiting millions of dollars off of artists, would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists.
Because I got signed so young—I got signed as a minor—and when I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt and, like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and could not afford health insurance. It was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system and so dehumanized to not have health [care]. And if my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to.
So, record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection. Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
Roan had spoken earlier in the night, pledging her continued support to the trans community during a red carpet interview. “It’s brutal right now, but trans people have always existed and they will forever exist and they will never, no matter what happens, take trans joy away,” she told GLAAD hosts Chrishell Stause and Anthony Allen Ramos. “I would not be here without trans girls. So just know that pop music is thinking about you and cares about you and I’m trying my best to stand up for you in every way that I can.”
It’s no secret that the mainstream music industry is rife with race, ethnicity, and gender-based pay inequity (among other issues), but it is unusual, to say the least, for a pop icon and Grammy winner to call out that systemic and pervasive injustice at the industry’s most public-facing annual event. That’s why we love Chappell Roan. She goes against the grain and isn’t concerned about backlash or public image when it comes to speaking her mind.
The speech happened right after Roan took home the highly anticipated best new artist award. Victoria Monet, the 2024 winner of the same category, came onstage to announce Roan as this year’s winner. The “Hot to Go!” singer-songwriter thanked her fellow nominees, “whose music got me through this past year.” Roan brought a notebook to the stage to deliver remarks she said she had always told herself she would say if she were ever to find herself in this position.
Roan brought the Grammys crowd to her “Pink Pony Club” with a fantasy inspired performance of horses and clowns. On theme with the night, Roan said of her love of Los Angeles, “‘Pink Pony Club’ is my love letter to L.A. I love this city. L.A. gave me the courage to be myself becauseh ultimately it is where I feel the most free.”
Roan spoke, danced and sang from the heart on this night. She gave artists a platform to change the way the industry treats its intellectual properties. She told the record labels that this practice will no longer be tolerated and she earned a spot as a powerful voice and a leader for future artists. The 27 year old has cemented herself as a superstar and I look forward to how she shapes music and the industry in the future.