After its live debut on SNL back in November of 2024, Chappell Roan’s “The Giver” has had fans in an absolute frenzy awaiting the debut of a recorded version.
Since the moment she entered the scene, Chappell has been a queer artist for the queers. “Your favorite pop star’s favorite pop star,” as it were. With singles like Good Luck, Babe! that remind maybe a few too many WLW-leaning individuals of the loves that never were, to Red Wine Supernova which takes us on the ride of the quintessential Gay Awakening that we’ve all gone through at one time or another, there has been absolutely no shortage of music that is made for us.
Coming from beneath the good ol’ Mason-Dixon Line, I, myself, spent a very long time feeling on the outs of my community. I grew up in a tiny little Texas town where I had a few too many words that start with F thrown my way.
In retrospect, I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry was maybe not the most empowering song regarding bisexuality, but I remember how excited I was to hear anyone talking about kissing girls at all when I was (at the time) a girl who also happened to like kissing girls. I know many other people in my position who felt similarly at the time. We all shared some very core experiences when it came to finding ourselves. One of those things was longing to see ourselves… anywhere. Or at least see ourselves anywhere that wasn’t the dreaded OrangeAndBlack.com.
Looking back, I feel like it’s pretty easy to say that little Pippin would have been absolutely smitten with Chappell Roan. Especially this newest single.
If you’re from the South – and especially in more ‘spiritual’ households – you might know that you tend to be brought up on a lot of country music (it’s either that or gospel, kid, pick one). I, for one, longed to play the violin alongside Martie Maguire of The Chicks. No really, I joined the orchestra in the sixth grade to prove it. I studied the yodeling styles of Hank Williams Senior and employed them any time I would croon Blue Moon by LeAnn Rimes into my bathroom mirror.
But I never saw myself in those people. I was an autistic trans kid living in a seemingly neurotypical cis-gendered female body, wandering around in a house- a town- a world that wasn’t built for me. There was no representation in the music that I listened to. In fact, I didn’t see representation for myself at all until I started getting into early to mid-2000s pop-punk and emo material (that’s a story for a later day).
I think at the time, I would have killed for a song like The Giver. After all. The entire thing starts off with a violin, or- a fiddle, rather.
There is something so incredibly satisfying about listening to a classic country opening to a song knowing that it’s about to be sung by one of the most raging lesbian artists you’ve ever known. It pulls you into the swing of things before dropping down to give us our first real taste of Chappell’s vocals.
If I waffled on and on in this article about the vocal flips and carefully crafted tones that this woman uses in her singing, I would go on for at least another 3,000 words. While Chappell has said herself that she had never taken a vocal lesson until very recently, I don’t think anyone would have ever known. Granted, she’s had more training within the past year as she’s had a rise in popularity and she’s been afforded access to those sorts of lessons, but you can’t very well listen to The Giver and not still hear those same beautiful flips, trills, and vibratos that we’ve come to know and love.
As you might expect, this song is rather pink and orange-toned in sound, if you know what I mean. The fiddle plays as a bubbly peach, while our harmonizing vocals paint a dusky sienna. Chappell’s voice, however, is the hottest pink you can find just short of a neon sign. All wrapped and woven together in pretty little plaid bow and delivered right to our ears.
There is so much to be said about lyrics like “Girl, I don’t need no lifted truck revvin’ loud to pick you up, ‘cause how I look is how I touch,” in the middle of a song like this. Again, not to harp on (I will continue to harp on until my dying day), but in a genre like country music, this sort of queer representation is just not seen nearly enough.
Hell, there’s hardly any representation of anything in country music if you’re not hitting certain demographics.
It’s only been over the past couple of decades that we’ve finally been lucky enough to see a handful of black artists cut through country music scenes. Most notable is Beyoncé’s COWBOY CARTER, which won not one, not two, but three Grammys this year- two of which were linked to the album’s genre specifically.
Back in 2019, we saw Lil Nas X become the first openly gay black artist to win a Country Music Award for Old Town Road – and its 422 variations (just kidding, it was only four).
There is nothing sweeter than the taste of victory, and that victory is carving a cozy little spot for yourself in all of the most cut-off places that tell you “you can’t sit here”.
The Giver is a song that means a whole awful lot to those of us who grew up in those places.
Chappell said it best herself in an interview with Amazon Music “[I wanted] to really capture what I think the essence of country music is for me, which is… nostalgia, and fun in the summertime, and the fiddle, and the banjo. Feeling like a country queen. It makes me feel a certain type of freedom that pop music doesn’t make me feel.”
Personally, in my (totally not biased) opinion, I think she has done just that.
So maybe March is a little early for a summer hit, but we gay little Southerners will be taking The Giver with us into the blistering months to come.
Some of us might even don our fanciest rhinestone hats.
To follow Chappell Roan and her astounding music career, you can find her with the handle @chappellroan on YouTube, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok. There’s nothing but blue skies and high hopes for our girl this year, and all the ones after.
Yee-haw, indeed! Y’all come back now, y’hear?
