Chappelle Rowan can’t be stopped.

Over the past 12 months, the 26-year-old has become pop’s biggest star. A gorgeous, fiery-haired vibe, their songs are both colorful and raw.

Her debut album, released quietly in 2023, has just topped the UK charts for the second time. Next week, she’s up for six Grammys, including best new artist. BBC Radio 1 named her Voice of 2025.

The success was made even sweeter because her former record label refused to release many of the songs that exploded on the charts last year.

“They said, ‘This isn’t going to work. We don’t understand’,” Ron told Radio 1’s Jack Saunders.

Being on the front lines of pop music was not just a vindication, it was a revolution.

The 26-year-old is the first female pop star to achieve mainstream success as an openly queer person, rather than coming out as part of their post-fame narrative.

On a more personal note, she finally moved into her own house and got a rescue cat named Cherub Lou.

“She’s very little, her breath smells bad, and she doesn’t meow,” the singer doted on.

If owning kittens was a perk of fame, Ron was outraged by its drawbacks.

She once publicly opposed insulting fans. Call for ‘creepy behaviour’ Those who harassed her in queues at the airport and “stalked” her parents’ house. She went viral last September after she cursed a photographer who insulted a star on the MTV Awards red carpet.

“I was looking around and thinking, ‘Is this what people have always accepted? Am I supposed to act normal? This isn’t normal. This is crazy,'” she recalled.

The incident made headlines. British tabloids described her outburst as a “tantrum” from a “spoiled diva”.

But Ron was unapologetic.

“I’ve been responding this way and it’s been disrespectful my whole life – but now that there’s a camera on me and I also happen to be a pop star, those things don’t match up. It’s like oil and water.”

Ron said musicians are trained to obey. Standing up for one’s point of view is considered whiny or ungrateful, and rejecting convention comes with a price.

“I think, actually, I would be more successful if I could wear a muzzle,” she said with a laugh.

“If I were to transcend more of my base instincts of where my heart goes,”Stop, stop, stop, you’re not good‘, I’ll be bigger.

“I’m going to get bigger…and I’m still on tour right now.”

In fact, Ron has resisted pressure to extend the tour in 2024 to protect his physical and mental health. She attributes this determination to her late grandfather.

“He said that every step I take in my career I will take that into consideration. There are always options.”

“So when someone says, ‘Do this concert because you’re never going to get that much money again,’ it’s like, who cares?

“If I don’t want to do it now, there’s always an option. Opportunities are not scarce. I think about that all the time.”

Fans know by now that Ron was born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz and raised in the Bible Belt town of Willard, Missouri.

The oldest of four children, she aspired to be an actress, but for a long time her future seemed to lie in sports. She competed at the national level and almost went to college to run cross country.

At the age of 13, she participated in a singing competition and won. Soon after, she wrote her first song, about a crush on a Mormon boy who was not allowed to date outside of his own faith.

She took her stage name in honor of her grandfather Dennis K. Chappell And his favorite song, a Western ballad called “Strawberry Fancy.”

“He was very funny and very smart,” she recalled. “I don’t think he ever questioned my ability.

“A lot of people were like, ‘You should totally go country,’ or, ‘You should try Christian music.’ He never told me to do anything.

“He was the only one who said, ‘You don’t need a backup plan, just do it.'”

Eventually, one of her gothic ballads, “Die Young,” caught the attention of Atlantic Records, who signed her when she was 17.

After moving to Los Angeles, she recorded and released her first EP, School Nights, in 2017. It’s a solid but unremarkable piece of work, filled with the voices of Lana Del Rey and Lorde.

Ron discovered her voice when a group of gay friends took her to a drag bar.

“I walked into that club in West Hollywood and it was like heaven,” she told the BBC last year. “It’s amazing to see all these people feeling happy and confident about their bodies.

“And the dancers! I was mesmerized. I couldn’t stop watching them. I was like, ‘I have to do this.'”

She didn’t become a dancer, but she did write a song imagining what it would be like to be a dancer and her mother’s reaction. Luo An calls it pink pony club after a strip bar in her hometown.

“That song changed everything,” she said. “This puts me in a new category.

“I never thought I could actually be a ‘pop star girl,’ Pink Pony forced me to be.”

Her label disagrees. They refused to release Pink Pony Club for two years. Soon after they relented, Ron was dropped in a round of pandemic-era cost cuts.

Bruised but not injured, she returned home and spent the next year serving coffee at a drive-thru donut shop.

“It definitely had a positive impact on me,” she said. “You know what it’s like to clean public restrooms. It’s very important.”

This period was transformative in other ways as well. She saved up her money, got her heart broken by a guy with “pale blue eyes,” moved back to Los Angeles, and gave herself a year to make it happen.

It might have taken longer, but she hit the ground running.

While in exile, Ron kept in touch with her Pink Pony Club co-writer Daniel Nigro.

He also collaborated with another up-and-coming singer named Olivia Rodrigo, and when her career took off, Ron was offered a ringside seat, supporting Rodrigo on tour and Providing backing vocals for her second album Guts.

What’s more, Nigro used the momentum to sign Roan to his label and secure a September 2023 release date for her debut album.

At first, Ron’s original label seemed correct. Sales were disappointing and audiences struggled to accept it, as her explicitly queer songs were at odds with the trend of whispery, confessional pop.

But the songs come to life on stage. Big, fun and designed for audience participation, Roan’s powerful voice and gorgeous stage presence take them to new heights.

“Drag queens don’t come on stage to calm people down,” she said. “Drag queens don’t say flattering things. Drag queens make you blush, you know what I mean? Expect that same energy in my performance.”

Sure enough, it was her live performance at last year’s Coachella Music Festival that propelled her into the upper echelons of pop music.

Wearing a PVC crop top emblazoned with the words “Eat Me,” she played the headline role in a crowded Gobi tent, strutting around the stage and directing the audience in an exaggerated dance routine to “Hot To Go.”

She then looked directly into the camera and dedicated a song to her ex.

“Bitch, I know you’re watching…all the horrible things that happen to you are karma.”

The video went viral, and soon after, her career followed suit.

By summer, all of her shows were getting an upgrade. Festivals continue to push her to bigger stages. When she competed at Lollapalooza in August, she drew the largest daytime crowd ever for the event.

“It only takes ten years,” she said. “That’s what I tell everyone. ‘If you can take 10 years, you’re good’.”

When fans discovered her debut album, Roan also released a standalone single – an ironic synth-pop track called Good Luck Babe, which became her breakout hit.

“I don’t even know if I said it in the interview, but it was originally called ‘Good Luck, Jane,'” she revealed.

“I wanted it to be about me falling in love with my best friend and then she’s like, ‘Hahaha, I don’t like you, I like boys.’

“It was like, ‘Okay, good luck, simple‘. “

“Good Luck Baby” is a masterclass in pop storytelling, with a proper three-act structure, a killer payoff in the middle eight and a chorus you can’t shake.

Still, Ron was stunned by its success.

“I just threw it away, like, I don’t know what it’s going to do—it carried it for a whole year!”

The question, of course, is what’s next for the star now that she’s become the Voice of 2025.

She’s already previewed two new songs, “The Subway” and “The Giver,” in concert, but all she revealed about her second album is that she’s “less willing to be sad or dark.”

“It feels so good to party,” she explains.

Looking back on the past 12 months, she’s philosophical about what it means to be pop’s hottest new commodity.

“A lot of people think fame is the pinnacle of success because what else can you want other than adoration?”

Ron did admit that the admiration of strangers was more “addictive” than she imagined.

“Like, I understand why I was so afraid of losing that feeling.

“It’s so scary to think that one day people won’t care about you as much as they do now – I think (that idea) is in the female brain very differently than it is in men.”

Ultimately, she decided, success and failure were “out of my control.” Instead, she wants to make good choices.

“If I can look back and say, ‘I didn’t crumble under the weight of expectations, and I didn’t endure being abused or blackmailed,’ (then) at least I was true to my heart,” she said.

“Like I said before, there’s always a choice.”

Chappell Roan has been selected as BBC Radio 1’s Voice of 2025 by a jury of more than 180 musicians, critics and music industry experts.

The top five are: