'Country music is so incredibly camp': Chappell Roan on unsung LGBTQ country culture
Pop star Chappell Roan highlighted LGBTQ contributions to country music in an Apple Music interview posted Friday.
Pop star Chappell Roan highlighted LGBTQ contributions to country music in an Apple Music interview posted Friday. The Grammy-winning singer released a country single, “The Giver,” featuring lesbian innuendos, banjos and a catchy fiddle melody Thursday. Roan, who premiered the song on “Saturday Night Live” in November, has said it was inspired by her Midwestern upbringing.
Roan emphasized the connections between LGBTQ and country culture, calling the genre “so incredibly camp” in the Apple interview. Though queer people are underrepresented in the genre, Roan said, LGBTQ people often fill the stadiums and supplement the bands.
“Even if it’s not the artist that’s gay singing — girl, those backup singers, those girls on tour, the people playing banjo — there are gay people making the music,” Roan told Kelleigh Bannon, a country singer and Apple Music radio show host.
“There are a lot of gay country fans, a lot of drag queen country fans,” Roan added, noting that drag queens around the world have performed lip syncs to Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” and Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” Others, like drag superstar Trixie Mattel, have written their own country albums.
Roan, 27, said she drew inspiration for “The Giver” from Twain, also citing the classic country stars Miranda Lambert, Alan Jackson and George Strait. She detailed her relationship with the genre dating to her childhood in the Ozarks, touching on both nostalgia and cultural norms that she had to “unlearn.”
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