As you can see, we were primed to end the month on a very high note…
[Listen] [Video]
[8.36]
Tim de Reuse:
[WHILE READING THIS BLURB PRETEND IT’S APRIL 2020, WHEN “PINK PONY CLUB” WAS FIRST RELEASED] Feeling a similar calling, I also recently moved from the American south to a place that stuffy Christian moms associate with godlessness and eroticism, though I went north instead of west. There’s a lot of dark and crowded rooms I’d like to be in right now, but for however many weeks it takes until Covid blows over, it’s all just — as she puts it with a degree of sincerity that borders on embarrassing — wicked dreams. So I relate to Chappell Roan’s fainting disco-sigh, draped in yawning, expensive string sections and luxurious synthesizers, precisely for how overwrought and silly it is; nothing more levelheaded would capture the frustration and the suppression of the current moment. When you’ve just become an ex-teenager and are desperately trying to pierce that membrane that separates you from adulthood, the first desire that happens to you For Real is the best and worst and most intense thing that’s ever happened to anyone ever, and this youngness pushes through in the cracks of her voice as drag melodrama: a performance about yearning to perform. It’s kind of the perfect thing to release while all the clubs are closed, isn’t it? This spring we’re all stuck in one big Tennessee.
[10]
Julian Axelrod:
What are we blurbing next month, “Sweet Caroline”? I think this was my parents’ first dance at their wedding.
[10]
Jeffrey Brister:
I’m thinking about how the Queer Resilience Anthem has evolved. “I Know A Place” was a song of love and shelter, a place to bask in joy in a hostile world. “Pink Pony Club” is about staking a claim for yourself and your peers. Understanding that queerness is inherently defiant and confrontational these days. It’s a concept I’m relearning, and this silly song is the perfect vehicle for rediscovery.
[7]
Claire Davidson:
It makes sense that “Pink Pony Club” was the song that soundtracked Chappell Roan’s rise to fame, as she took it everywhere from Saturday Night Live to the Grammys, and all the record-breaking festival sets that helped along the way. As the last song she recorded at Atlantic before being dropped, it’s a lovely little middle finger to the executives who are surely kicking themselves for not realizing her talent when it counted. More importantly, though, Roan has always kept her queer fans from rural areas closest to her heart, and this song is such an obvious gay anthem for those of us dreaming of more that it hardly even needs the designation. Even that devotion to her fanbase speaks to how radical her ascension, as well as that of “Pink Pony Club,” have been, because while Roan’s message of inclusion is paramount in her lyrics—the titular bar is one where “boys and girls can all be queens every single day,” after all—her unabashed decision to emphasize that this is a song about a gay bar, one likely patronized by all the drag performers who have inspired her persona, is its own reminder that Roan’s ambitions prior to 2024 were surely no higher than achieving the cult following of someone like Carly Rae Jepsen or Marina Diamandis. (In other words, becoming… well, gay famous.) Yet beyond all its symbolic status, “Pink Pony Club” is also just a damn good calling card for the kind of pop music Roan wants to make, encompassing nearly all of her artistic strengths in just over four minutes. There’s the feeling of shared confidence that Roan etches wonderfully in the lyrics, envisioning the kind of euphoric enclave where everyone is free to unleash their most uninhibited selves, if only for a night. There’s the earnest theatricality of the opening verse’s mock cabaret delivery, and—who could forget—the tongue-in-cheek melodrama of the pre-chorus, demonstrating that one of Roan’s most refreshing qualities is the humor she imbues in her lyrics. Still, what most excites me about “Pink Pony Club” is how well it reflects the artistic growth Chappell Roan has already seen: she’s mostly moved beyond the overripe “indie girl” affect that emerges during the during the verses, and Dan Nigro seems to have developed a better handle on how to best infuse real color into her work, instead of relying on the fizzy synths that power this song—but even that complaint is one I have to qualify, because the guitar solo that drives the outro is one of my favorite moments of any hit from 2024. If there’s one Chappell Roan song I think will have staying power in pop culture decades removed from now, it’s “Pink Pony Club,” and while it’s not my favorite track in her discography (a remark that is, again, only a further testament to her talent), that’s at least one prediction for the future I actually want to come true.
[8]
Jel Bugle:
I’ve not really managed to get into Chappell, as there is a real “drama school kid” sound to this. I’m sure there is lots to love here, but it’s a perfectly fine retro-ish song, dare I say it?
[6]
Leah Isobel:
The rising wave of political violence has rendered “Pink Pony Club,” a song I found pleasant but forgettable back in 2020, significantly more poignant. Too bad pop music can’t save us.
[6]
Ian Mathers:
Here’s the deal: every time we cover a song I’ve known for as long as this one, that still gets stuck in my head this regularly, I’m going to give it this score. If you don’t like it, make songs into hits faster, so they’re not old favourites by the time I get to them.
[10]
Mark Sinker:
Somehow — of course as a “pop scholar” I know this is wrong but I can’t quite spot how it’s wrong any more — this has already established in my softening brain as a celebratory IdPol standard ancient as the ages. Alongside “I Will Survive” (as invoked by PPC’s opening piano flourish): the cheesier it gets the more unmoveable. When did we all first hear it? Really? Really??
[9]
Alex Clifton:
A friend first sent me “Pink Pony Club” in June 2020, and it’s been on repeat ever since. So much has changed since then — a global pandemic, upheavals in my personal life, four Taylor Swift albums — but “Pink Pony Club” remains as sparkling as it did the first day I heard it. There’s something so charming and magical and hopeful about it. It’s a song that makes it feel worthwhile to be alive. I may sound overdramatic, but I have genuinely choked up over videos of crowds singing the final chorus of “Pink Pony Club” at festivals. It’s not just emblematic of Roan’s bonkers rise to fame, but also a real testament to the unifying power of music. Doesn’t matter your gender, age, your station in life — you too can be a Pink Pony girl, deserving of a good-ass time despite others’ protestations. If this were the only song Roan had put out in her career, she still would have cemented her status as an absolute classic. We are so lucky that this is just the beginning. No matter what else this woman does, I’ll always be thankful she’s given me a reason to dance.
[10]
Melody Esme:
I first became acquainted with “Pink Pony Club” because my roommate was constantly playing it early last year. By the end of the year, it was my SOTY. Now, I’d say it’s one of my favorite pop songs of all time. Not merely queer, but defiantly so—a work of pure camp, about embracing yourself as you are even if it means making yourself a pariah to the people who raised you. To make jaws hit the floor is terrifying, but in the end, your ability to shock the world just by being who you are can be an amazing gift. So make lots of noise, kiss lots of girls (or kiss lots of boys if that’s something you’re into).
[10]
Taylor Alatorre:
I feel like you have to buy fully into the artist’s mythos to see this as a canonical, chart-transcending Anthem, rather than just a serviceable first draft at stardom. So as much as I relish the notion that there was likely a separate DNC Slack channel about the “Chappell Roan problem” last year, that doesn’t make the whole “Midwest Princess” angle feel any less underbaked to me. There’s nothing in the lyrics (or music) of “Pink Pony Club” to indicate that its story takes place outside of the 1980s, when the disco balls were still unironic and West Hollywood was at the peak of its cultural relevance. There’s also nothing to indicate that the narrator’s mother is especially moved by anti-gay animus; she’s mortified that her daughter is dancing “at the club,” not any type of club in particular. Neither of these are flaws, but they do lower the stakes a bit, funneling the song’s narrator onto a well-trod path of youthful self-discovery that’s been related many times in many guises. I treasure the unguarded, almost unnoticed moment when Chappell reflexively inhales a big gulp of air before diving back into the final iteration of the chorus. I only wish she had applied the same unguarded energy to the guitar solos, which sound like they’ve been placed behind glass as a museum piece so as not to infect their surroundings with the sweaty odor of rockism.
[6]
Jonathan Bradley:
There are Chappell Roan songs I embrace wholeheartedly, but what keeps her interesting for me are her gauche moments, the times when I feel awkward and embarrassed for her grasping artifice. “Pink Pony Club” filches its intro from just-because-its-true-it-doesn’t-mean-it’s-not-cliché drag anthem “I Will Survive,” and Roan declaims her ensuing verse in a timorous plummy alto. She dreams of a “special place where boys and girls can all be queens every single day,” but even after she finds it, that place exists only as a Xanadu that provides reassuring escape from the here and now, rather than a new complicated city to live in with new complications of its own. She traps her song in the earnest lovely naïveté of the queer country kid who has just discovered the big city and could never dream it could be anything but heaven. “Pink Pony Club,” though, matches its high-strung camp with the high-strung camp of the fretful conservative parents back home, who mourn “oh god, what have you done,” as if mustering enough melodrama of their own might restore their world to rights. It’s all so much misplaced feeling: dancing at the Pink Pony Club sounds, like the song that bears its name, fun and tacky and a bit awful, and probably much more mundane than anyone involved might imagine.
[8]
Alfred Soto:
As with, take your pick, “Espresso” or “Yesterday” it’s a karaoke standard, sung by histrionic men and women for over a year. No one listens to the words — we board this flume ride and board as the track of Chappell Roan’s vocal melodies carries us along bump free.
[7]
Dave Moore:
Uncle!
[10]