Skip to main contentFebruary 2, 2025
Chappell Roan may have won the coveted best new artist prize at the 2025 Grammys, but the “Pink Pony Club” singer and certified Midwest princess wasn’t content to simply bask in the spotlight on Sunday night. Instead, the queer pop star devoted much of her time at the Grammys to advocating for workers and members of the LGBTQ+ community, two groups that are already seeing their rights curtailed just a few weeks into the second Trump administration.
Roan spoke out against unfair labor practices within the music industry during her acceptance speech, saying:
“I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here before 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 health care, especially to developing artists. I got signed so young—I got signed as a minor. When I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt, and like most people, I had… quite a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and [could not] afford insurance. It was devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system and dehumanized. If my label had prioritized it, I could have been provided care for a company I was giving everything to. Record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection.”
Roan was no less outspoken earlier in the night, pledging her continued support for the trans community on the red carpet. “It’s brutal right now, but trans people have always existed and they will forever exist and they will never, no matter what happens, take trans joy away,” she told GLAAD hosts Chrishell Stause and Anthony Allen Ramos. “I would not be here without trans girls. So just know that pop music is thinking about you and cares about you and I’m trying my best to stand up for you in every way that I can.”
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It’s no secret that the mainstream music industry is rife with race, ethnicity, and gender-based pay inequity (among other issues), but it’s unusual, to say the least, for a pop darling and Grammy winner to call out that systemic and pervasive injustice at the industry’s most public-facing annual event. Chappell Roan, the empathetic politically active lesbian that you are!
