Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Portraits by Photo by Mary Mathis for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Chappell Roan’s debut album might chart The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, but in the world of pop, she’s going nowhere but up. The Missouri-born singer-songwriter and her mop of red hair have been inescapable on pretty much every social platform. She’s been opening for (and kissing) Olivia Rodrigo on the Guts World Tour, dancing to her own music in front of Red Lobster, and got us all doing the treadmill strut. At this point, Roan is basically the chief marketing officer for gay pop. But, wait, didn’t someone else just say they wanted that job?
Last week, JoJo Siwa got roasted to oblivion for saying she wanted to “start” a new music genre called “gay pop.” (Pronounced like “K-pop,” but with “gay” instead.) Folks including Betty Who and the beloved duo Tegan and Sara raised their eyebrows, prompting Siwa to walk back her statements and explain that she never meant she wanted to invent a new genre—no, no—she simply wants to “be a piece of making it bigger than it already is.” The “Karma” singer added that, although she’s “not the president [of gay pop],” she’d like to be the CMO “and use my marketing tactics whether people like it or not.”
To be clear, there’s plenty of room in the pop world for all of the JoJo Siwas and Chappell Roans, especially as queer artists continue to conquer other genres including rock (see: boygenius), rap (Lil Nas X), country (Orville Peck), and R&B (Janelle Monae and Frank Ocean). What’s fascinating here is the mirror image that these two represent—one, an industry-approved star working very, very hard to leave her kiddie-music days behind by solidifying herself as an edgy, queer artist; the other, a performer whose debut album was almost a decade in the making and only came together after she’d moved to Hollywood at 17, gotten kicked off her record label a few years later, lost all her money, and moved back in with her parents while working at a drive-through coffee kiosk. Taken together, these two artists’ trajectories offer a fascinating window into the State of Gay Pop Today.
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