Chappell Roan drops long-awaited single ‘The Subway’
The track finally gets a studio release.
Photo: Press
Since its debut at the Governors Ball Music Festival 2024, fans have been going wild for an official release. Now it’s here, it’s queer, and will rip your heart right out.
Few tracks have gathered the momentum and anticipation of Chappell Roan’s recent exploration into country music and the female orgasm, The Giver. Since its debut on Saturday Night Live back in November 2024, fans demanded a full release. When it finally came in March of this year, the response was outright biblical. In the six months since, The Giver has amassed over 110 million streams on Spotify.
In June 2024, Chappell Roan performed for the first time another unreleased track: The Subway. Fans went wild. They screamed and raved at this outpouring of perfectly portrayed lesbian heartbreak, but it felt like another track doomed for live bootlegs alone. Even when The Giver was released earlier this year, fans were saying, “Okay, great. Now give us The Subway”.
Over a year on and Roan has released the full track, accompanied by a music video, which sees its heartbroken singer breaking down on the Manhattan subway. The track itself is the kind of Midwestern, homosexual love-charged pop only a true performer like Roan can put together, echoing the haunting, softer moments of her debut album Casual and Coffee.
There’s plenty of personal experience and raw emotion here, coupled with the trademark Roan lyrical style in lines, “I made a promise / If in four months this feeling ain’t gone / Well, fuck this city / I’m movin’ to Saskatchewan”.
Many will see The Subway as a spiritual twin to The Giver, but they’re counterparts are more than single siblings. Where The Giver celebrates the hedonistic ecstasy of sexual intimacy, coordinated around a three-minute country pop romp’n’stomp, The Subway is a rejection of that physical love, focusing on the untouchable sadness that comes with losing your soulmate, and coming to terms with their moving on. Both represent the brilliance of Roan, and on The Subway, this girl from Missouri gets to prove that she’s far, far more than just a Midwestern pop singer.