Category Music

It can be hard for any queer person to know how best to celebrate Pride, something I’m appreciating anew at 30-going-on-31 (which, yes, is objectively Not Old, but still makes me feel like a crone every time I go to the Woods on a Wednesday night and everyone looks young and dewy-skinned enough to be my biological daughter). Gay bars are always a popular choice, but, like clockwork, they get crowded and claustrophobic every June. And when it comes to parades? Sorry, but I have all the promotional bank T-shirts I need already.

In my quest this month to find new places to hang out and affirm my queer identity without getting a) sweaty, b) overwhelmed, or c) unattractively drunk, I’ve identified Pride paradise in an unlikely place: the Instagram comments of one Ms. Chappell Roan, a.k.a. the Femininomenon herself, whose sex-forward lyrics and recent transformation into a chaps-clad Statue of Liberty—to say nothing of her pointed refusal to perform at the White House—have cemented her as an LGBTQ+ icon in her own time.

For queer, trans, or gender-nonconforming people, Instagram comment sections can be absolute cesspools, but Roan’s are a friendly, rainbow-bathed, who’s-who of the cool-kid scene, with everyone from Ariana Grande to Rina Sawayama to indie label Fashion Brand Company logging on to make their standom known. (Plus, Roan recently got a follow from no less a club-banger authority than Carly Rae Jepsen…collab soon, queens?) Witness the magic for yourself below:

Singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams’s second studio album, The Secret of Us, has just dropped, and two Vogue editors who happened to be stuck on an Air France flight together took down their reactions to it in real time. The conclusion? They love nepo babies and, as fellow Gen Z’ers, they can relate to most of Abrams’s lyrics about love and friends.

[Editor’s note: To ensure that they had the best possible listening experience, both staffers waited until they reached their hotel rooms to listen to the Taylor Swift feature.]

“Close to You”

Irene Kim: Gracie fans have been waiting so long for this song, and it was so worth it.

Florence O’Connor: This song came out, and I already knew all the words. I didn’t know that I knew all the words!

Kim: This song is something only a teenage girl could write, in that moment and time.

O’Connor: “I want to be close to you” is how I felt about you, Irene, before I worked at Vogue. I wanted to be close to the cool girl my age on Vogue Runway. (I’m famously a huge Instagram stalker, and Irene is famously private on Instagram.)

At the turn of the millennium, Mariah Carey’s career was in transition.

Inching away from the sweeping ballads and torch songs that had defined her early sound, Carey comfortably bridged the gap between pop and hip-hop when the “Fantasy” remix featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard hit number one in 1995. Two years later, her album Butterfly and its lead single, “Honey,” expanded Carey’s sound by moving her even further into hip hop.

During the recording of Butterfly, Carey separated from her husband Tommy Mottola, the music executive who had maintained intense control over her career and image ever since signing her to Columbia Records a decade earlier. Eager to push her music in new directions, but working against Tommy’s distaste for hip-hop, Carey had sold more than enough records by that point to chart her own way forward. So, with one more album left in her contract with Columbia, Carey set out for Capri during the summer of 1999 to record what became Rainbow.

Rainbow, Carey’s seventh studio album, sold eight million copies worldwide and earned her two more number one hits: the Jay-Z-assisted “Heartbreaker” and “Thank God I Found You.” There are plenty of ballads to be found across the album, the deeply personal “Petals” and Diane Warren-penned “Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)” key among them. But its most colorful moments are when Carey lets loose on tracks like “Heartbreaker” and “How Much,” which sampled Tupac’s “Me and My Girlfriend” years before Beyoncé and Jay-Z did the same. Compared to the sultry Butterfly, Rainbow finds Carey gleefully experimenting in ways that Carey hadn’t been allowed to before.

This week sees the release of a digital 25th Anniversary Expanded Edition of Rainbow, featuring unreleased bonus tracks, classic live performances, remixes, and much more. “Rainbow (Interlude)” from the original album has been adapted into the dancefloor-ready “Rainbow’s End,” while the a capella version of “Bliss” somehow manages to be steamier than the studio version. It’s plenty of material for the Lambs to chew on while awaiting updates on Carey’s next album.

Ahead of her final performances in Vegas this summer as a part of her Celebration of Mimi residency, Vogue caught up with Carey to discuss the anniversary of Rainbow, shooting its iconic cover with David LaChapelle, and whatever happened to that spray-painted tank top.

Vogue: How was the experience of revisiting Rainbow and that chapter of your life in general for this 25-year anniversary?

If you’ve ever dared to say anything less than kind about Taylor Swift online, you’ve probably already come face-to-face with the brute force of her fandom. Swifties, as they’re known, are as famous for their strategic thinking (see: the downfall of Ticketmaster) as for their overwhelming passion for the object of their pop affections. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that a dedicated group of them—known as Swifties for Kamala—are turning their abundant energy to helping elect Kamala Harris as president this November. While the group takes pains to note it isn’t formally associated with Swift, their power is no less formidable: Swifties for Kamala has raised almost $150K in campaign contributions and recently hosted the likes of Carole King and senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey on its first fundraising call.

Vogue recently spoke to two card-carrying members of the Swifties for Kamala movement—first-time campaign volunteer Emerald Medrano and swing-state voter Carly Long—about the political motivation behind their fight, the overlap between Taylor Swift standom and Harris-Walz 2024 campaign values, and the importance of blocking a second Trump presidency. Read the full interview below:

Vogue: What drew you to get involved with the Harris-Walz 2024 campaign?

Emerald Medrano, 22, cofounder and chairman of Swifties for Kamala: In an odd way, my fears have really been what’s inspired me to act in this election. No matter what happens in November, I know I want to look back on this election season with the feeling that I did everything I could to help Kamala become the 47th president of the United States. I don’t want to live with regrets, and I don’t want to live in a country that doesn’t treat all humans with kindness. I know America is ready to be dazzling, and Kamala will let us be bejeweled.

Carly Long, 25, communications director for Swifties for Kamala: When Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee, I felt a real sense of hope for the election. For once, I wasn’t only voting against something but for something—for someone strong and intelligent, for someone who will fight for the rights and safety of minorities, for someone fun and energetic. Her campaign has given me pride in my candidate, and I want to be part of electing the first woman to lead this country!

Oh, 2024. What a year it’s been. Just when we thought that pop music was beginning to sound a little stale and warmed up, along came Chappell Roan to remind us of the power of a big, bold chorus and some really quite off-the-wall costume changes. Not since Lady Gaga has there been an artist who’s entered megastar status with this much organic rizz in the space of one summer—although you know that already. Which is why there’s been a big question mark hovering over 2025: Is there going to be a follow-up to her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess? And, if so, what will it look, sound, and feel like?

Obviously we don’t know a huge amount yet. The 26-year-old’s debut only came out toward the end of last year, and it took another half year for the record to properly gain momentum. But there have been a few clues dotted around for those who are really paying attention. Here, we’ve gathered everything we know about Roan’s as-yet-untitled second album thus far.

She’s working with producer Daniel Nigro again

You may not immediately recognize the name, but you’ll certainly have come across the songs that Nigro has worked on. The New York producer and songwriter has his fingerprints on everything from Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion (2015) to Caroline Polachek’s Desire I Want to Turn Into You (2023), and both Olivia Rodrigo records Sour (2019) and Guts (2023). He also co-wrote and produced Roan’s debut, so you know the man knows how to help craft a slice of pop perfection. Both Roan and Nigro have confirmed that they are working together again for the second record—which, thank God, because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, etc.

Five new tracks have been written, including “The Subway”

Back in September, Roan told Rolling Stone that she’d gotten down five or six songs already. “We have a country song. We have a dancey song. We have one that’s really ’80s, and we have one that’s acoustic, and we have one that’s really organic, live-band, ’70s vibe,” she said. “It’s super weird.” And then, earlier this month, in an interview with The New York Times, Nigro shared a similar update. He referenced one “fun, up-tempo country song” which includes “a fiddle. I’ll say that much. It’s a new version of Chappell.” Plus “a couple of ballads and a mid-tempo rock song.”

Back in the MTV era, the celebrity experience went something like this: person gets famous, person is hounded by paparazzi, photographs of said person go on sale to the highest tabloid bidder, rinse and repeat. Maybe fans would wait outside hotels and venues for autographs. And maybe there’d be a few stalkers tracking down a house phone number now and then. But mostly being a celebrity was a physical experience, one defined by running from camera flashes and trying not to advertise one’s whereabouts too much.

The ’90s and ’00s were famously not a fun time to be a celeb. But now, it seems, the boundaries between A-listers and fans have been eroded even further. We don’t need paparazzi and tabloids so much when we have our own phones—we can be the paparazzi and the tabloids. And social media means we can find out not only where a celebrity is, but where their family is, too. We can see who they’re friends with, where they’ve been going, and which burger joint they frequent at 3 p.m. when they’re hungover (even if they don’t post, you can bet that somebody near them will have done). Celebrities are under constant surveillance, and if you reach a certain level of fame, your personal life is going to be sacrificed as a result.

This is a life that 26-year-old pop star Chappell Roan isn’t willing to accept for herself. On Friday afternoon she posted on her Instagram: “For the past 10 years I’ve been going non-stop with my project, and it comes to the point that I need to draw lines and set boundaries,” she wrote. “I’ve been in too many non-consensual physical and social interactions, and I just need to lay it out and remind you, women don’t owe you shit.” She then goes on to say that when she is on stage or at a press event she is “at work,” but “[in] any other circumstance, I am not in work mode.” She continues: “Please stop touching me. Please stop being weird to my family and friends… And please: don’t call me Kayleigh.”

Chappell isn’t the first famous person to say some variation of “celebs don’t owe you everything” (in 2016, Justin Bieber stopped doing fan meet-and-greets because he said they made him feel drained and “like a zoo animal”). But she is one of the first to make such an unwavering statement so early on in her career. This time last year, not many people knew the name Chappell Roan. Now, the name’s a household one and you’d recognize her face even out of drag. So she’s nipping the situation in the bud before going any further. In the same way that you might decide, early on, to not reply to work emails out of hours, or to not follow your boss on social media, Chappell is saying that when she is not performing (read: being paid to perform or make a work-related appearance), she needn’t be switched on.

Tom Rasmussen has always worn many hats. (Quite literally, in some cases: the musician first made themself known to the wider world as their former drag alter-ego, Crystal, a Russia-born, Lancashire-raised songstress with a penchant for fascinators.) They’ve written two books, co-composed a musical, and even served as a sex and relationships columnist for Vogue. But the hat they’ve always felt most comfortable wearing—and which they returned to in earnest a few years ago—was pop music. “I think it’s so embarrassing to be like, ‘I’m a storyteller,’ because that’s what annoying people say,” Rasmussen says, with typically self-effacing humor. “But I think that’s what I’ve done across all my work, and it really came to the forefront when I started writing my own music, for myself.”

In 2023, Rasmussen released their debut album, Body Building, on Globe Town Records: a heady, dance-pop rollercoaster of a record whose more euphoric moments were counterbalanced by remarkably vulnerable lyrics charting the peaks and troughs of coming out as nonbinary, and the double-edged sword of visibility. Now, just 18 months later, Rasmussen has returned with its follow-up, Live Wire—and is ready to wear their heart on their sleeve in a different, more hopeful way. “I’m really pro big and beautiful, vast emotions,” Rasmussen says of the more introspective tone of the new record, which delves into the smaller, quieter moments of their life—from casual hook-ups to marriage and their most intimate friendships. “I’m a funny person, but I’m also quite emotional and actually quite sincere.”

“Please! Please! Please! Play Espresso!” Read a sign in the crowd at Sabrina Carpenter’s Coachella set earlier this year. The singer had just released the now inescapable hit the night prior. Little did we know, the sign was a sneaky little Easter egg for “Please, please, please,” the lead single for Carpenter’s recently announced album Short n’ Sweet, out August 23. Carpenter’s new era is kicking off with a music video co-starring none other than her biggest hype man, the Academy Award nominated actor Barry Keoghan.

“I’m feeling like I will never pay for another coffee again, and I’m so grateful and excited for people to hear the whole record. It’s so close to me!” wrote Carpenter over email about entering her new era post the success of “Espresso.” In the video, Carpenter wears everything from Alaïa and Dilara Findikoglu to Alexandre Vauthier couture and custom Coach (“I always like to heighten fashion and storyline in my videos, it’s playtime for me”) while fabulously and—quite seductively—pleading to her mischievous lover to not embarrass her any longer. “Heartbreak is one thing, my ego’s another/I beg you don’t embarrass me, motherfucker,” she sings. One has to wonder, who could this song be about?

For those well-versed in the Sabrina Carpenter universe, the singer gets arrested at the end of her “Espresso” music video. “I ended the last video getting arrested, so naturally I thought it would be satisfying to start the ‘Please, please, please’ video in jail,” she wrote. “I liked the idea of falling in love with a convict and being shocked and embarrassed every time he commits crimes. I was sooo lucky to get Barry Keoghan in the video cause he is just magic on screen.” There’s no arguing with that.

To celebrate Carpenter’s new single and the announcement of her sixth album (you read that right, this didn’t happen overnight!), the video’s director and Vogue contributor, Bardia Zeinali, and Carpenter’s stylist, Ron Hartleben, joined Vogue for a short and sweet (sorry, I had to) chat about the making of “Please, please, please.”

A wise sage by the name of Kacey Musgraves once implored her listeners to “kiss lots of boys, kiss lots of girls, if that’s what you’re into,” and more than a decade later, it seems another pop-country chanteuse has opted to follow those sacred instructions. Maren Morris, the Texas-born-and-bred singer-songwriter whose songs have netted her five Academy of Country Music awards (not to mention a Grammy), came out as bisexual on Monday, writing on Instagram that she’s “happy to be the B in LGBTQ+.”

In a perfect world, a 34-year-old woman coming out as bisexual wouldn’t be news, but unfortunately the world that we actually live in—and Morris’s country-music milieu in particular—can still be hostile to such disclosures. Still, it’s heartening to think of Morris joining the ranks of Orville Peck, Lil Nas X, and other openly LGBTQ+ artists who choose to make their art within (or at the fringes of) the country scene.

If Morris isn’t necessarily surrounded by queer community in the world of mainstream country music, fans are definitely making her feel welcome on Instagram, where the comments section on her coming-out post has become a veritable Pride parade of rainbow-flag emojis and hearts. (A quick dig through the annals of country history shows that Morris is far from the first woman in her genre to be attracted to other women, of course; the late country singer Wilma Burgess, who had over a dozen Billboard-charting singles between 1965 and 1975, was an out lesbian.)

Hopefully, Morris’s candidness about her sexuality will inspire country to get a little more inclusive—and inspire her fans wrestling with their own LGBTQ+ identities to feel a little more comfortable loving who they love…or, at the very least, blast the Chicks’ iconic, deeply sapphic-coded country ballad “Goodbye Earl” at top volume. (I mean…killing an abusive man and then peacefully making jam with your bestie for the rest of your life? Sounds pretty queer to me!)

I’m not going to lie: I thought I was pretty cool for serving appetizers at my 31st birthday party last month. I mean, what’s more adult and elegant than giving guests little ham-and-cheese pinwheels to gnaw on while they drink to excess? But, shockingly enough, Charli XCX somehow outdid me at her 32nd birthday fête in Los Angeles on Friday, which drew none other than Lorde in to dance with Charli to their “Girl, So Confusing” remix.

I don’t even know what to focus on first in that Oscar-worthy video snippet, to be honest. Is it Charli’s Brat-green phone case? Her beyond-perfect pantless birthday look? Lorde’s nutso little braids? Rachel Sennott and Molly Gordon dancing next to them? The guy in the crowd who’s clearly being FaceTimed in? Or should we just zoom out to the fact that the Manic Pixie Dream Guy himself, Glen Powell, was there too (well, not necessarily at this specific moment, which seems to have been reserved for the girlies and gays, but at the party more generally)?

As if Powell’s presence weren’t enough, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Finneas, Gracie Abrams, Addison Rae, Tove Lo, Nelly Furtado, Anya Taylor-Joy, and two of the Willis sisters—Scout and Tallulah, to be specific—were also on hand to celebrate the day this world went from being Charli XCX-less to Charli XCX-full, and I certainly hope they brought a vast array of slime green gifts.

Ultimately, though, one specific detail of the birthday party had me astral projecting, and it was the stunning and extremely on-brand cigarette bouquet that singer Rosalía brought Charli for her birthday: