Chappell Roan wasn’t kidding when she revealed recently that her highly anticipated sophomore album is nowhere near complete.
In a Tuesday (Aug. 12) interview with Apple Music 1‘s Zane Lowe, the pop star shared that — in addition to not having much of a start on the writing process — she doesn’t even know what her next project will sound like. And according to her, it doesn’t help that all three of the singles she’s released since dropping debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess have completely different sonic styles, from the country-fried “The Giver” to the ’90s rock-inspired “The Subway.”
“I just think that ‘The Giver,’ ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ [and] ‘The Subway,’ they’re all kind of so different,” Roan began. “So that’s why I’m just like, ‘I have no idea what the next era is.’ That’s the scary part of putting out new music and then people not liking it, because it’s not like the music you made before.”
“It makes you scared to release stuff,” she continued. “You’re like, ‘Well, people aren’t ever going to like it as much as the first one.’ That’s the risk you take every single time.”
The interview comes about a week after Roan first curbed lofty fan expectations by telling Vogue that no, she won’t be releasing another album any time soon, despite the pressure to follow up the success of Midwest Princess. “The second project doesn’t exist yet,” she said at the time, noting that it could take up to five years to complete CR2. “There is no album. There is no collection of songs.”
That said, Roan does think that her latest single, “The Subway” — which arrived Aug. 1 and recently gave the star a career high debut on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 3 — will be a “safe” transition from Midwest Princess to whatever comes next. “I think it’s a good ring on the ladder,” she said of the track, which she also revealed to Lowe was actually written about her experiences in Los Angeles, despite its distinct New York City imagery.
“‘The Subway’ is just so much more romantic,” she explained. “But it was actually about me hiding in Los Angeles from someone who I was deeply in love with. We weren’t on bad terms, it was just kind of trying to avoid the coffee shops that we went to and parties. And so that’s where it came from, was, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to exist in this city.’ I felt pretty lonely there for many years.”
Plus, no matter which styles Roan employs on her next album, the commercial success of her three post-Midwest Princess songs — each of which reached the top 5 of the Hot 100, despite their differences — proves that fans are all but guaranteed to love it. And while breaking molds can be scary, the Missouri native says that experimenting with different genres is “one of the most admirable things an artist can do.”
“When Gaga released Joanne, and just was like, ‘Oh, I actually have this entire other side of me outside of pop,’ that just builds the character of your artistry,” Roan told Lowe.
Roan’s full interview with Lowe will arrive on Apple Music 1 soon.
