She’s the buzziest rising star in pop music this summer, she counts music industry luminaries like Elton John and Ariana Grande among her fans, and she’s been compared to pop icons like Madonna and Lady Gaga. She is also, notably, an Interlochen alum.

Meet Chappell Roan, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter whose debut album, 2023’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, is currently captivating American pop audiences. Last week, Roan took the stage at Chicago’s Lollapalooza and drew one of the biggest crowds in the storied music festival’s three-and-a-half-decade history. She also has six songs currently in the Billboard Hot 100 – including the Top 10 smash “Good Luck, Babe!” – and had the most streamed album in the country this week on Spotify.

Ten years ago, Roan was having a distinctly different summertime experience. Then a 16-year-old aspiring songwriter from Willard, Missouri, Kayleigh Rose Amstutz (Roan’s birth name) spent the summer of 2014 studying as part of the singer-songwriter program at Interlochen Arts Camp. Speaking to the Ann Arbor-based LGBTQ+ website Pride Source last fall, Roan – who identifies as a lesbian – said her Interlochen experience “literally changed my life.”

“I've never met creative kids before that camp, and it changed my trajectory forever,” Roan said. “I'd never been with other songwriters before in my life that were my age. Everyone was a fucking hippie, and I'm from Trump country. I'm from a heavily church background, and this is not that. There were kids from all over the world there. It was just so inspiring.”

During her time at Interlochen, Roan wrote a song called “Die Young,” about her struggles with depression and finding a sense of belonging. It ended up being her ticket out of her hometown. She posted the song on YouTube the following fall, under the name Kayleigh Rose, and within a few months, record labels were circling. In May 2015, she signed her first major label record deal, with Atlantic Records; she was 17 years old.

Local singer-songwriter Seth Bernard was on the faculty for Interlochen’s songwriting program during the summer of 2014, but didn’t realize until about a week ago that the Kayleigh Amstutz he taught back then was the same pop star whose music his 10-year-old daughter has had on repeat for months. Once he made the connection, Bernard says it immediately made sense to him why this particular student had grabbed ahold of the zeitgeist.

“I remember when Kayleigh played ‘Die Young’ for me for the first time, and just feeling totally knocked out by it,” Bernard tells The Ticker. “She just had this incredibly mature voice as a songwriter, and I remember not having any critical feedback for her. I just said, ‘Obviously, you have created something special here. You've alchemized these painful experiences you’re going through to write a song that's going to mean a lot to a lot of people.’”

Bernard’s prediction would come true, but not right away. In 2017, Amstutz adopted the Chappell Roan moniker – a tribute to her late grandfather, Dennis K. Chappell, whose favorite song was the country staple “The Strawberry Roan” – and released her debut EP on Atlantic. The five-song project, called School Nights, featured “Die Young” as its opening track, but failed to find much of an audience. Atlantic subsequently dropped Roan from its lineup.

Fast-forward to now and Roan is in the midst of a big, big year. Her blast-off began last September with the release of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Where Roan’s earlier work had carried a darker pop vibe, Midwest Princess reframes her sound as something different: bright, colorful, ultra-melodic, and loudly, proudly queer. The shift drew significant praise from music critics: Pitchfork called the album “a bold and uproarious pop project stitched with stories about discovering love, sex, and oneself in a new place,” while AllMusic said it was “the best kind of pop album” for how it “captures a generational zeitgeist and introduces the world to a refreshing new voice....”

While Midwest Princess only tallied about 7,000 sales in its first week, Roan has notched one word-of-mouth moment after another in 2024, and they’ve snowballed to turn this one-time Interlochen camper into a cultural phenomenon. First, she opened for fellow Gen-Z pop star Olivia Rodrigo on Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour. Then, she appeared as the musical guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Shortly after, she gained viral online attention for a performance at New York City’s Governors Ball Music Festival, where she dressed as the Statue of Liberty.

Roan’s rise hit its loftiest apex yet last week at Chicago’s Lollapalooza. At the music festival, Roan drew an estimated 80,000-plus people to her 5pm set on Thursday, August 1 (pictured, right). This week, CNN proclaimed that Roan “may have had the biggest Lollapalooza set of all time.”

While Bernard has been proud to witness all the success, he’s proudest to see Roan using her newfound platform to make a statement. During her Governors Ball performance, Roan said she’d recently turned down an invitation from the White House to perform for a Pride event. “We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come,” she said. “In case you have forgotten what’s etched on my pretty little toes: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,’” Roan added, referencing her Statue of Liberty costume. “That means freedom in trans rights; that means freedom in women’s rights; and it especially means freedom for all oppressed people in occupied territories.”

“I talked a lot at Interlochen about music and activism, and about the responsibility of the microphone and the role of artists in society and in social change, which is something I’m extremely passionate about,” Bernard says. “I remember Kayleigh being really interested in that side of things, too.”

While activism in entertainment sometimes earns an artist as many enemies as it does fans, Bernard thinks Roan’s willingness to speak out and be a beacon for change might be the one thing that best explains her meteoric rise to superstardom.

“Music as a vehicle for liberation is still as powerful as it was in the ‘60s,” Bernard says. “Rock ‘n’ roll was all about liberation, and every generation has its artists that that capture that same spirit. Chappell Roan is creating art that represents liberation for her generation – and it’s got people on fire.”