Boron is living proof that it takes 10 years to be an overnight success, and that the universe is preparing you for your moment, even when you don’t realize at that moment actually is yet. And just from January to April of this year, she was barely cracking a million monthly listeners, now is over 17 million and is even selling out crowds larger than festival headliners like Edge Shirin. And in 2,017, this girl got signed to a record label and then was dropped, had to move back home, was working out of a donut, shot a coffee shop for years. At one point almost completely gave up on her dream and now is having one of the largest success stories of any artists we’ve seen in the past decade, and I cannot be more excited to talk to you all about Chapel Road today because her story is absolutely unreal. And this is not even begin to scratch the surface of some of the things she had to go through in order to get to where she was today.
So welcome back. My name is Nikki and I could not be more excited to chat with you all about Chapel. So I think really chapels career kind of breaks down into three major chapters for me. So starting in from like 2,014 to 2,020 is really this origin of her career, how she gets discovered from a small town in Missouri and makes it all the way to Los Angeles. Then I’d say this middle part of her career from about 2020 to 2022 is when she gets signed to a label, gets dropped to that label. And also I think really in this time, you see her start to discover her sound. I think a lot of the earlier Chapel music is not Pink Pony Club and feminine and the songs we know and love her for today.
And then this last chapter is honestly like just really truly the past six months, but so much just happened in these six months that I wanted to break it all down and how, again, somebody can go from literally 17 times their size as an artist to, you know, opening for Olivia Rodrigo, performing at Coachella, selling out tickets across the country. Like how does that happen so quickly and what did she do to make it happen so quickly? So rewinding all the way back, Chappel was born again Willard, Missouri. And this is pretty much a middle of nowhere town. So the only way for her to really get discovered ever was she uploaded covers to YouTube. And did you know that in 2,014 Chapel Roan got discovered by choice of an on Twitter before she had even created the name Chapel Road. So he said, quote, I’ve had this 16 year old girl on repeat for two months. You have to listen to this guys. Ghost hands on left. This is on November 4th,2,014. And it is a picture of Kaylee Rose, which is Chapel Rome’s real name, Kelly Rose and Stuttes. And it is her song Die Young. At the time, Kaylee had Chappel had only been posting coverage to YouTube and Dai Yang is her first ever solo song or original song. And you can even see like she doesn’t even have 7,000 subscribers at this time. And what’s crazy is on this starts like a Twitter thread where he’s like, hey, this is her Twitter. Let’s blow up Kaylee because I haven’t even heard a voice like this since Adele. And funny enough, in the same thread, very at times possible of 2014, I would like to add Connor, Franta comes in and says, yes, give that vocally blessed goddess her well deserve promo. Keep in mind, this is three years before she even gets signed to her first ever label, Kaylee Post. After that, the videos at 15,000 videos and counting. And she’s like, this is amazing. And thank you so much everyone who supports my music and especially choice of on.
Little did either one of them know that they would both go on to be two of the biggest queer icons in pop music, especially youth like queer pop music in 2024, again, literally ten years later, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. What do I always say? So that is again like such a beautiful story and also has got me thinking like, can we get a champ chapel and choice on like that would eat.
I know in a recent interview, Charlie XCX had mentioned that her dream artist to collaborate with right now was Chapel Room. So I feel like the three of them could make an incredible edible song together that would absolutely just blow my mind. So fast forward to 2,017. Chapel gets a record deal with Atlantic Records, which is a huge record label, and she moved 16 miles to Los Angeles just to pursue this deal. And she has talked a lot about in her music and at this time that going from this very small town in Missouri to West Hollywood was like really the first time she ever felt surrounded and accepted for her queerness. And she felt like she could finally start writing songs as the real her are, at the very least, about the sorts of life experiences she wanted to be writing about. So on August 3rd,2,017, she is her first single title, Good Hurt. September, Later that year, she releases her first EP. And then while under Atlantic, she went on tour, opening for Vance Joy in 2017 and then Declin Mckenna in 2018. And to me, I don’t know what happened, but to me, this seems like Atlantic didn’t really understand like the vision of her music or at the very least wanted her to be a different artist than the chapel we know today, right? Like Chapel Roan opening for in Olivia Rodrigo makes a lot of sense in terms of like musical styles or at least like audience pop music for a very young audience. Definitely Mckenna and Ryan’s Joy is very like more indie folk artists. And I think that maybe that’s what they had wanted or expected from Chapel at this time, being she was this, you know, Midwest girl from Missouri and thought that was more of the sound that she was trying to lean into.
2020 Chapel has been releasing music through Atlantic and now she’s starting to write her first album. So she starts working with a producer you might be familiar with under the name of Dan Nigro. Dan Nigro is the same man who went on to produce a little album we like to call sour by Olivia Rodrigo, which is the highest charting s debut by any female artist ever in history. So she, on her first time working with him, writes the song Pink Pony Club. This is in 2020. And then later that year, sour and Driver’s License come out. So she, Dan Nigro gets a little bit busy producing for somebody else. But Pink Pony Club, I think is really the song where you see she starts to discover her sound and like her themes as an artist. I mean, that’s literally a song based off of the Abbey in West Hollywood, which is really funny, but it’s about being in the club and like being very openly and outwardly gay and how her thinking about like what her mother would think of that or what her family would think of that, but how happy and safe and excited she feels to be doing that finally. And I felt like that was such a beautifully thematic song to be the first and first song she ends up writing for what becomes rising for all the Midwest Princess. But this is two years before we even get to that point. But this song ends up flopping. Pink Pony Club was a total flop in the beginning, which is insane. But that is because this song came out in April of 2020, which is one month after the Covid 19 pandemic, which means that she had started writing it a few months before that. So to release a song that’s very like gay pop music about a specific club that is closed in the middle of a global pandemic that would go on for like a subsequent two years. It did not help the song. We’ll say that much. So I believe this song ended up losing money and she gets dropped.