Elton John has revealed the advice that he’s shared with Chappell Roan on coping with fame – see what nuggets of wisdom had had to impart below.
- READ MORE: Chappell Roan: the pop supernova who feels like one of the ‘Drag Race’ girls
2024 saw Chappell Roan get catapulted to meteoric levels of fame – thanks in large part to her 2023 debut album ‘The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess’. For instance, her Lollapalooza set was one of the festival’s most-attended in history. Elsewhere during the year, she opened Olivia Rodigo‘s ‘Guts’ tour before putting on headline-making performances at Coachella and Governors Ball.
However, it hasn’t been an entirely positive experience for the singer, who has also witnessed the stresses of her sudden fame. Roan has been vocal about her experiences of fame over the last couple of months, venting about the normalisation of extreme fan behaviour, including “stalking, talking shit online, [people who] won’t leave you alone [and] yelling at you in public”.
Since entering the upper echelons of fame, Chappell Roan has sought advice from the likes of Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Charli XCX, Lorde and more. One icon that offered her words of wisdom was none other than Elton John, with whom she has FaceTimed on several occasions.
Speaking to The Ankler in December, Elton revealed some of the advice that he’s shared with her on managing fame during their chats: “Chappell was a little overwhelmed with her sudden success — although she’d been writing for a long time, it really kind of ballooned very quickly. I just try and calm her down and say, ‘Listen, it’s fine. It’s fine. Do what you want. Don’t listen to anybody. Walk at your own speed. Do not listen to the record company saying, ‘We want another album, we want another album.’ Do it when you’re ready to do it.’”
He continued: “I’ve got that experience. I’ve been through everything in my life as far as knowing what to do in music, seeing people come, seeing people go. Sometimes they disappear much too quickly.”
To add on, he relayed his message back to his own longevity and shared other instances of fast-rising success for artists like RAYE and Billie Eilish: “I’m kind of a survivor; one of the people still around at 77. I’m probably as popular as I was when I was younger, and that’s been a miracle. But it’s nice to be able to pass that stuff on and see the results in people. There’s this English singer RAYE, who’s a wonderful artist. She left her record company on principle and did what she wanted to do. And it just completely was successful. I admire her so much for doing that. She took a stand and her result was her own vision of what she should be doing. It just exploded.”
“Billie Eilish is another one. I remember seeing her first album just crawl up the Billboard charts every week: Word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth, and it just suddenly got there and she’s become one of the greatest female artists I can think of. I mean with the new album, it is just extraordinary how good it is, and you can say that of all her albums. Every single one is different and every single one is an improvement. How great is that? I get so much energy from that.”
Elton John has been a long-time fan of Roan’s, and in August 2024 congratulated the ‘HOT TO GO!’ singer on achieving her first UK Number One album with ‘The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess’ almost a year after its release that month. He also included ‘Red Wine Supernova’ in his 15 favourite songs of 2023 list.
Elsewhere, Roan’s ‘Good Luck, Babe’ was recently named as NME’s best song of 2024. “With ‘Good Luck, Babe!’, Roan set out to write a ‘big anthemic pop song’. It was an unqualified success: over subtly insistent synth-pop, Roan serves up home truths to someone desperately trying to deny their queerness,” the entry read.
