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Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club": A 5-Year Fight to the Top
4 Dec
Summary
- Chappell Roan's hit song "Pink Pony Club" was first released five years ago.
- Atlantic Records dropped Roan before the song's initial release.
- The anthem celebrates gay bars and queer expression spaces.
Chappell Roan's popular song "Pink Pony Club," an ode to gay bars, achieved massive success five years after its initial creation. The track was first written in 2019, but Roan and her producer Dan Nigro faced a year-long struggle to get Atlantic Records to release it. The label eventually agreed, but subsequently dropped Roan before the year concluded, leaving her to reclaim the song's masters.
Three years after being dropped, "Pink Pony Club" found a new life on Roan's debut album, "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess." Two years later, it became a chart-topping hit, accumulating close to 1 billion streams on Spotify. This journey was marked by significant effort, with Roan expressing her deep satisfaction that their persistence paid off and validated their belief in the song.
The inspiration for "Pink Pony Club" stemmed from Roan's experiences in Los Angeles, particularly a visit to a West Hollywood gay bar that represented a sanctuary for queer expression. Co-writer Dan Nigro recalled the immediate sense of something special during its creation, with the song's lyrics narrating Roan's transition from the Midwest to the West Coast, symbolizing spaces where individuals can freely be themselves.
