Listen to Chappell Roan’s new “full ass country song” ‘The Giver’
Chappell Roan has today shared her new “full ass country song” called ‘The Giver’ – listen below.
Roan has been steadily teasing ‘The Giver’ for some time now, with the former NME Cover star debuting the song during an appearance on Saturday Night Live last November. On the show, she told the audience: “All you country boys saying you know how to treat a woman right. Well, only a woman knows how to treat a woman right,” prompting fans to dub the track a “lesbian anthem”.
Before then, Roan’s producer Dan Nigro told The New York Times fans could expect a “fun, up-tempo country song” that featured a fiddle, and said it would show “a new version” of the ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ singer.
Now, a retro lyric video sees Roan take on different service-oriented characters – a lawyer, dentist, plumber, and private investigator – all of whom promise to “get the job done”.
The innuendo-heavy characters – “The Lawyer: You’ll love my briefs!” – also made an appearance on billboards around America before the single was shared.
The song is Roan’s first new music out since the hugely successful one-off single ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ last year, and in a press release, she shared why she close country for the follow up.
“I have such a special place in my heart for country music,” she explained. “I grew up listening to it every morning and afternoon on my school bus and had it swirling around me at bon fires, grocery stores and karaoke bars.
“Many people have asked if this means I’m making a country album??? My answer is.. right now I’m just making songs that make me feel happy and fun and The Giver is my take on cuntry xoxo may the classic country divas lead their genre, I am just here to twirl and do a little gay yodel for y’all.”
‘The Giver’ features an anthemic chorus as Roan sings: “Cause you ain’t gotta tell me, it’s just in my nature/ So take it like a taker, cause baby, I’m a giver/ Ain’t no need to hurry, cause baby, I deliver/ Ain’t no country boy quitter/ I get the job done.”
Taking to her Instagram today, the ‘Red Wine Supernova’ singer reflected on the lead up to its release, and gave fans some insight as to why she switched to country.
“I love this song so much and it’s been such a fun rollout to see the bus benches and billboards and posters and tear-offs wow I am so excited for all of it to come to life,” she wrote. “It is def a bold and scary move to release a full ass country song after only releasing one song last year and it having such a success in the pop genre .. (like I am very scared as I type this lol) but I think that’s the entire point of Chappell Roan.
“Be bold and scary and have fun,” she continued. “Be popstar girl then pop an edible +watch YouTube vibes. The whole point of this is to be silly !!!” She went on to describe country music as “fire”, and the “campiest of camp”, telling fans unsure about the fiddle and banjo featured in the new songs that “sometimes, different can feel bad because it’s unfamiliar, but I encourage you to give her another shot”.
‘The Giver’ arrives shortly after she had performed a duet of ‘Pink Pony Club’ with Elton John at his Oscars viewing party. Elsewhere at Elton John’s fundraising event, she took the stage for a full set that included more duets with John for ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ and ‘Your Song’, which she covered on YouTube five years ago before finding mainstream fame. She also sang ‘Naked in Manhattan’, ‘Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl’, ‘Femininomenon’, ‘Hot To Go’ and ‘Good Luck, Babe!’.
Just the night before the performance, Roan had used her voice to dedicate her BRIT Award win “to trans artists, to drag queens, to fashion students, sex workers, and Sinead O’Connor,” and prior to that made headlines after using her Best New Artist speech at the 67th Grammy Awards to take aim at record labels and share her past experience as a struggling new artist.
Her rapid ascent to stardom has so far seen 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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Poppy Burton
NME
