After finding a new record label, she released her debut album, The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess, in September 2023.
A slow-burning success, it only sold a few thousand copies in its first week of release. But word began to spread – and when she played California’s Coachella Festival last April, the crowd that turned up for her mid-afternoon set was huge.
More importantly, the show was broadcast on YouTube – going viral after Roan leaned into the TV cameras and declared: “I’m your favourite artist’s favourite artist.” The performance has subsequently been watched more than a million times.
Around the same time, she released a stand-alone single called Good Luck, Babe, that talked about her experience of falling in love with her best friend.
“It’s a pop song with a sad element to it,” she told News last year.
“It’s very common in queer relationships, when someone is still coming to terms with their queerness, [that] they’ll kiss 100 boys to ‘stop the feeling’, as the song says.
“And it’s like, ‘Sure, OK. Your time will come.'”
The single eventually reached number two in the UK charts, and The Rise And Fall Of The Midwest Princess became a number one album after it was re-released on vinyl last summer.
Since then, Roan has been nominated for six Grammy awards, including album of the year, and won best new artist at the Billboard Music Awards in December.
She has also experienced the downside of her sudden fame, and spoke out about the “creepy behaviour” of certain fans who “yelled” and “harassed” her at private moments; and who had approached her family and friends.
The singer has taken time off at the start of 2025 to work on new music, but will headline the Reading & Leeds festival this summer.
