Despite offering two new songs this year, “The Giver” and last week’s “The Subway,” Chappell Roan has confirmed that her sophomore album “doesn’t exist yet.”
In a new interview with Vogue discussing “The Subway,” its New York City-themed video, and its heartbreak-fueled origins, Roan acknowledged that her fans are passionately awaiting a follow-up to her 2023 debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess. However, despite the lyric video for “The Giver” teasing new songs via a DVD Menu player called “To Be Yours” and “Read & Make Out,” Roan said that “the second project doesn’t exist yet… There is no album. There is no collection of songs.”
That’s because, for Roan, the album-making process requires patience. “It took me five years to write the first one, and it’s probably going to take at least five to write the next. I’m not that type of writer that can pump it out,” she said. “I don’t think I make good music whenever I force myself to do anything… I see some comments sometimes, like, ‘She’s everywhere except that damn studio.’ Even if I was in the studio 12 hours a day, every single day, that does not mean that you would get an album any faster.”
Though she’s not exactly wrapping a bow on a new album, Roan is gearing up to head back on tour for her first US shows since her record-breaking festival run in 2024. Her schedule is still packed, but Roan expressed optimism about the upcoming run: “This pace is good right now. This feels good and manageable,” she said. “I feel like, for the first time in over a year, I can finally be excited about going to work and doing my job.”
Elsewhere in her chat with Vogue, Roan discussed her ideas for “The Subway’”s transit-centric video, her experiences living in New York City over the last few months, and why she feels kinship between “The Subway” and her earlier song, “Casual.” She also expressed why she’s been regularly deleting social media from her phone to keep her focused: “Socials harm the fuck out of me and my art. I’m not doing that to myself anymore,” she said. “I’ve never written an album where I don’t have Instagram or anything… The album process is purely, only mine. No one on TikTok gets to see it.”
We named Roan’s “The Subway” our Song of the Week upon release. Revisit our 2023 CoSign interview with Roan.
