A 14-Year-Old Chappell Roan Totally Predicted Her Future Grammy Glory: ‘Going to Do Whatever It Takes to Get It’
Chappell Roan knew it all along. After the “Pink Pony Club” singer capped a stellar year with a best new artist win and a headline-making performance at Sunday night’s (Feb. 2) Grammy Awards, an X user resurfaced an old video of a then-14-year-old Kayleigh Rose Amstutz accepting the first-place prize at 2012’s Springfield’s Got Talent show contest, which netted her a $1,012 novelty-sized check and a priceless quote.
“I want to win a Grammy,” the teen singer said at the time in the video shared by X user @m1dwestprincess. “So that’s my goal. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to get it. So that’ll be the fight for me.”
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Fast forward to Sunday, and not only did now-26-year-old Roan put on a kaleidoscopic, Broadway-worthy performance of her hit “Pink Pony Club” that Billboard called a “queer country clown fantasia,” but she also won her first Grammy. In keeping with her determination to use her platform to spread love and always push the needle, she called for proper healthcare for musicians in her acceptance speech.
“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 and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially for developing artists,” she said, reading out of a notebook.
She then shared that when she was dropped from a major label earlier in her career the lack of support had a major impact on her. “I got signed so young … 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,” she said. “It was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and to feel so betrayed by the system and to be so dehumanized to not have healthcare. If my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to.”
She also later spoke to GLAAD and made a call to support trans rights as they face an unprecedented attack from the Trump administration, which has spent the past two week erasing web pages that mention LGBTQ people and removing the last two letters from government websites. “Trans people have always existed and they will forever exist. They will never, no matter what happens, take trans joy away,” she said. “I would not be here without trans girls. Just know that pop music is thinking about you and cares about you. I’m trying my best to stand up for you.”
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