Everything We Know About Chappell Roan’s Next Album

Most of us are still riding high on The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, but Chappell Roan already seems to be cooking up something new. The singer has been dropping hints about upcoming music on social media, sending fans into high alert.

Take, for example, an Instagram she shared on October 29, in which she poses with a vinyl copy of her 2023 record. “Album kinda popped off imo but it is time to welcome a hot new bombshell into the villa,” she wrote in the caption. Fans freaking out in the comments seem to be wondering: that new bombshell is a new album, right?

And just a few days before that, she shared another possible teaser. Roan posted a carousel of Polaroid photos spelling out the phrase, “She Gets the Job Done,” and wrote in the caption, “This is a clue. Just let that sink in.”

Again, do we smell an album on the way?

We do know that Roan is working on a new record. She told Rolling Stone that she would have “from November to mid-May off to write” music following her tour. But her producer, Dan Nigro, said that they already started working on her follow-up to Midwest Princess in July.

So where is she at with the new project? Here’s what we know.

Which songs are on the album?

It’s too early to have a track list, but at the time Roan spoke to Rolling Stone for the magazine’s September 10 cover story, she revealed she had five to six songs she and producer Dan Nigro felt good about. “We have a country song. We have a dancy song. We have one that’s really Eighties, and we have one that’s acoustic, and we have one that’s really organic, live-band, Seventies vibe. It’s super weird,” she said.

Nigro told The New York Times that they have a “fun, up-tempo country song” (which includes a fiddle). “It’s a new version of Chappell,” he added. There are also “a couple of ballads and a mid-tempo rock song,” plus “The Subway,” a track Roan has been performing at her recent live shows but has not officially released yet.

What about “The Subway”?

Though Roan has already taken “The Subway” to the stage this summer, it likely won’t be her lead single. “I just like performing it,” she told Rolling Stone with a shrug. “I have two others that I really want to perform, too, [but] I don’t know what’s next. When I don’t know, it just hasn’t hit me yet because usually I know. I always have an answer. I don’t think it’s ‘Subway.’”

She made a similar point to Interview Magazine while speaking to Bowen Yang, insisting that it will come on her own time.

“I don’t know what the release plan with ‘The Subway’ is,” Yang told her, “but I feel like if you want that to just be a song that you sing live for a while, and not have it released—”

“That’s how I did the first album, and it fucking worked,” Roan replied. She later added, “My career has worked, because I’ve done it my way, and I’ve not compromised morals and time. I have not succumbed to the pressure.”

What else has Chappell Roan said about her next album?

“There isn’t much of an agenda with this next album,” she told Variety in May 2024. “I plan to do what I have always done: write songs that I love, create music I’m proud of and share that with the world. Maybe I should have more of an answer of what my expectations are [with the album], but at this point, I just don’t know.”

Nigro also said at the time that they were “literally right at the beginning of the recording process, it’s only been a few days.”

Speaking to NYT months later, he said, “We’re still writing from a really fun place. We’ll see what happens.”

Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she’s listening to Lorde right now.