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Chappell Roan and the ‘Ungrateful’ Pop Stars Before Her
A sampling of other singers who have tried to set boundaries with fans.
Chappell Roan made headlines throughout the summer for her attempts to push back against a culture of “creepy” fan interactions, urging her TikTok audience inAugust to treat her like a “random bitch.” But for years, critiquing aspects of fame has been a pretty reliable way of getting a singer dragged as ungrateful or unfit to be famous. Roan has prompted discourse over whether backlash for speaking up is rooted in misogyny, asserting in a follow-up Instagram statement that “predatory behavior (disguised as ‘superfan’ behavior)” has become “normalized because of the way women who are well-known have been treated in the past.” In a recent Rolling Stone cover story, she noted only a few men — Orville Peck, Troye Sivan, Noah Kahan, and Elton John — have extended invitations to her to talk, while rattling off a much longer list of women who reached out to offer support, including Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Hayley Williams, Katy Perry, Lorde, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Sabrina Carpenter, and the members of both boygenius and Muna. The impact: Cain explained her reasoning for deleting her Twitter to The Guardian: “I always kind of conflated openness with honesty and I thought that if I was completely transparent and bared every aspect of my soul that people would think I was relatable and kinda cool,” she says.
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