Chappell Roan won the Grammy for Best New Artist at the 2025 Grammy Awards on Sunday night, and she used her acceptance speech to fulfill a personal commitment: to demand better treatment for emerging artists. Taking the stage at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles to accept her first Grammy, the 26-year-old “Pink Pony Club” singer expressed her frustrations, revealing that she felt “so betrayed” and “so dehumanized” in the early stages of her music career.
“I told myself, if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry, profiting millions of dollars off of artists, would offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists,” the singer shared while reading from her yellow journal. “Because I got signed so young — I got signed as a minor — and when I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt, and like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and could not afford health insurance.”
Roan began her music career by uploading cover songs to YouTube as a teenager. She was signed by Atlantic Records in 2015 at just 17 years old. Taking on her stage name in honor of her late grandfather, Dennis Chappell, whose favorite song was Marty Robbins’ “The Strawberry Roan,” she released her debut EP School Nights in 2017. Though Roan recorded one of her biggest hits, “Pink Pony Club,” in 2020, the very track she performed at the Grammys, she was dropped by her label that same year when the song did not generate a profit.
Reflecting on that difficult time before signing with Dan Nigro’s independent label, Amusement Records, Roan told the crowd, “It was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system, and so dehumanized to not have help.”
“And if my label would have prioritized artist health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to. So record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection,” she continued. “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
After joining Nigro’s label in 2023, Roan released her debut studio album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess that fall. Featuring tracks like “Pink Pony Club,” “HOT-TO-GO,” “Casual,” and “Femininomenon,” the album became a major success and propelled her to pop stardom.
Following record-breaking festival performances, sold-out shows, and the release of her hit single “Good Luck, Babe!,” Roan claimed her first Grammy on Sunday night for Best New Artist. She triumphed over a competitive group of nominees including Benson Boone, Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii, Khruangbin, RAYE, Shaboozey, and Teddy Swims. In her acceptance speech, she thanked her fellow nominees, “whose music got me through this past year.”
