Grammys 2025: Chappell Roan’s Best New Artist acceptance speech demands record labels “treat their artists as valuable employees”

3 February, 2025

chappell roan

Chappell Roan has won the Best New Artist award at the ongoing 67th Grammy Awards, and her speech took aim at record labels by talking about her past experience as a struggling new artist.

The former NME Cover star has accrued six Grammy nominations, including Record of the Year for ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ and Album of the Year for ‘The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess’.

Chappell Roan won Best New Artist, beating the likes of Doechii (who won Best Rap Album), Benson Boone, Raye, and Shaboozey.

The pop artist – who, before that, gave a rousing clown-themed performance of ‘Pink Pony Club’ atop a giant pink horse – showed up in an Pagliacci-esque outfit and took the stage to deliver her acceptance speech, in which she previously teased that she will “say something controversial”.

Her resulting speech turned out to be a plea to record labels for better protections for up-and-coming artists.

She began: “I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here before the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a liveable wage and health care, especially developing artists.”

Her speech had already drawn applause by then, with artists like Taylor Swift giving her a standing ovation. Watch the full speech, along with her ‘Pink Pony Club’ performance, below.

 

“I got signed so young, I got signed as a minor,” she continued. “When I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt, and like most people, I had… quite a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and [could not] afford insurance.” Roan was previously signed to Atlantic Records in 2015 and was dropped from the label in 2020, the same year the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

“It was devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system and dehumanized. If my label had prioritized it, I could have been provided care for a company I was giving everything to.”

“Record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection.” She ended her speech by saying: “Labels, we got you. But do you got us?”

Roan is still in contention for Record of the Year and Album of the Year. See the full list of nominees and winners here.

Her ascent to stardom saw her land a UK Number One album in August, win the Best New Artist prize at the MTV VMAs the following month, and later earn six nominations at the Grammys 2025. She has also been announced as a headliner of next year’s Reading & Leeds and Primavera Sound, and this month she was crowned the winner of BBC Radio 1’s Sound Of 2025.

Roan’s ‘Good Luck, Babe’ was also 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.

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