‘Gay Pop’ Is the Moment, and Right Now, Chappell Roan Is Its Queen

Chappell Roan’s debut album might chart The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, but in the world of pop, she’s going nowhere but up. The Missouri-born singer-songwriter and her mop of red hair have been inescapable on pretty much every social platform. She’s been opening for (and kissing) Olivia Rodrigo on the Guts World Tour, dancing to her own music in front of Red Lobster, and got us all doing the treadmill strut. At this point, Roan is basically the chief marketing officer for gay pop. But, wait, didn’t someone else just say they wanted that job?

Last week, JoJo Siwa got roasted to oblivion for saying she wanted to “start” a new music genre called “gay pop.” (Pronounced like “K-pop,” but with “gay” instead.) Folks including Betty Who and the beloved duo Tegan and Sara raised their eyebrows, prompting Siwa to walk back her statements and explain that she never meant she wanted to invent a new genre—no, no—she simply wants to “be a piece of making it bigger than it already is.” The “Karma” singer added that, although she’s “not the president [of gay pop],” she’d like to be the CMO “and use my marketing tactics whether people like it or not.”

JoJo Siwa Doesn’t Know She’s the Butt of the Joke

To be clear, there’s plenty of room in the pop world for all of the JoJo Siwas and Chappell Roans, especially as queer artists continue to conquer other genres including rock (see: boygenius), rap (Lil Nas X), country (Orville Peck), and R&B (Janelle Monae and Frank Ocean). What’s fascinating here is the mirror image that these two represent—one, an industry-approved star working very, very hard to leave her kiddie-music days behind by solidifying herself as an edgy, queer artist; the other, a performer whose debut album was almost a decade in the making and only came together after she’d moved to Hollywood at 17, gotten kicked off her record label a few years later, lost all her money, and moved back in with her parents while working at a drive-through coffee kiosk. Taken together, these two artists’ trajectories offer a fascinating window into the State of Gay Pop Today.

As Siwa acknowledged, gay pop has a long, storied legacy. The list of artists is too long to include here, but consider artists like Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Sylvester, Boy George, Prince, and RuPaul, alongside newer acts like Hayley Kiyoko, Troye Sivan, Kim Petras, Sam Smith, Halsey, and Fletcher. Generally, we might define gay pop as having a few unifying features: a personal perspective, often shaped by living (and working, writing, creating) on the margins; a sense of humor and understanding of camp; some theatrical flair; and a mischievous thirst for transgression, either colorful or spiky.

It’s not hard to understand why Roan’s music has taken off. (Just this week, she made her debut on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.) In every possible way, she feels in tune with the moment. From her drag-inspired make-up, to her big wigs, to the lipstick on her teeth during a recent Tiny Desk Concert, this woman is oozing camp from her pores—and that’s not even mentioning the time she gave herself a Penelope nose on an album cover. Roan’s lyrics are personal, confessional, and, sometimes, wickedly funny. As seen in tracks like “Femininomenon,” she can swing from plaintive ballad vibes to a dance beat to meta-textual commentary in a matter of seconds. (“Um, can you play a song with a fucking beat?”) That approach puts her in line with fellow pop stars like Taylor Swift and Rodrigo (with whom she shares a producer), whose lyrics tell personal stories while, in some cases, establishing some ironic distance. Roan has the strutty verve of Lady Gaga and the giggly, sung-from-the-chest vocals of Katy Perry, and to top it all off—and to use that oh-so important descriptor for contemporary artists—she somehow makes it all look relatable.

... And then there’s JoJo Siwa, who grew up on Dance Moms and apparently drives a car covered in her own face. Over-the-top antics aren’t exactly anathema to the queer community—just ask Prince, who once turned his guest bedroom into a butterfly sanctuary—but every time Siwa tries to make a bold statement, something feels a little off. In the recently released video for “Karma,” the track that Siwa used to announce that she’s all grown up now, her geometric black-and-white make-up and finned unitard clumsily land somewhere between drag and metal. She spends the video air-humping everyone in sight, but from the blaring music production to her use of “effed around” instead of “fucked around,” it all somehow manages to feel distinctly un-sexy.

In other words, Siwa hits every mark, but she can’t make the choreography look natural. She’s got Kiss make-up on but apparently has no idea who Gene Simmons is. She’s made it clear that she wants to trade in her big bows and young audience for a more mature, subversive persona—her Bangerz era, as she recently framed it—but with this video, she still seems to be playing it just a little too safe. Is she really ready to lose her public goodwill, the way Miley did when she decimated all that remained of her Radio Disney cocoon as a foam-fingered, twerking butterfly? Because, fairly or not, that’s usually what it takes for a young female entertainer to take flight.

For all pop stars, but perhaps especially LGBTQ+ artists, there is a demand for authenticity and disclosure. People want to feel like their favorite artists are just like them, or, at least, that they could become friends if they met in line at Starbucks or wherever. As Siwa and Roan’s inverse trajectories show us, that whole “relatability” thing can be a blessing or a curse.

Both singers come from the Midwest, but at this point, Siwa is more closely identified with the Hollywood machine than her own regional roots. Roan has established herself as a self-made “thrift store pop star,” and Siwa solidified her coming-out narrative in 2021 by becoming one half of the first same-sex couple to compete on Dancing with the Stars. Roan maintains an aspirational bestie vibe, while Siwa and her mother have been accused of mistreating a young aspiring singer on their Peacock reality show. (Siwa and her mother denied the allegations through a lawyer to Rolling Stone.) At the same time that Siwa was getting dragged on Instagram for buying her “Karma,” Roan dedicated her own kiss-off, “My Kink Is Karma,” to one of her poor, unfortunate exes, taunting, “Bitch, I know you’re watching.”

In the end, though, the chief lesson we can take from JoJo Siwa and Chappell Roan’s approaches to “gay pop” is a lot simpler than all that. It seems that audiences mostly just want to believe that the artist they’re listening to is actually having fun. While Siwa seems fixated on making gay pop an “official genre” of music on platforms like iTunes (and promoting herself as its face), Roan knows the real power of this genre lies with the people who consume it. The true appeal of her brand is that it invites us all into the fun slumber party vibes she’s created with her music. As for the rest? She’s probably too busy twirling her nipple tassels to care.

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