Parasocial Relationships
When do fans get frightening?
Listen Up 📣
Some say she appeared overnight. But in the words of Ed Sheeran, and many other artists who have been working tirelessly behind the scenes before their star suddenly ascends, that must have “been one fucking long night”.
Chappell Roan has been an artist for 11 years. After uploading covers onto YouTube at 16, she wrote her first original song Die Young, and was signed at 17 by Atlantic Records. She moved from Missouri to LA where she found herself and her voice, and in 2020 released Pink Pony Club. When I first heard Pink Pony Club I was obsessed. It wasn’t only the production that was epic and quote on-quote “brave” for a pop hit (i.e. not introducing any drums until the post-chorus, shock horror!), it wasn’t just that her voice was so unique and so strong, it was also because what she had to say was interesting! And different! Finally, a different subject matter to falling in or out of love!
I was excited to hear more from her but it felt like just after that release she disappeared. There wasn’t a follow-up single and I wondered to myself what happened. It was only after her performance at Coachella did she burst back onto the scene and I found out why she went quiet - just 4 months after Pink Pony Club was released, her label dropped her because it didn’t generate a big profit at the time of release.
Side note to my main point: the short-sightedness of the industry blows my mind. A young is signed at 17 years old to a major label, releases a (in my opinion) promising first EP, showing clear ability and talent, and 3 years later writes a smash hit but is dropped because it doesn’t generate profit instantaneously!? Instant gratification in our society is reaching new levels of insanity. The industry fails so many incredible artists year after year because of this - where is artist development? Where is trust in the artist you’ve signed? Where is the patience and the belief to know that gold doesn’t rust?
And thank goodness for Roan, the gold of that song really didn’t rust. 2 years after its first release, she re-released it and it currently has just under 165,000,000 streams on Spotify alone and counting. Her kink really is karma.
But I digress. Even though her being dropped, going independent and finding other ways to get back to her main path is a great ‘follow the crumbs’ story.
If you’ve been reading Oh Crumbs from the beginning, you’ll know my first substack was about the toxic nature of fan culture and that my first single as Peachkit, called Love To Hate, was about just that. I think this is such an important issue for everyone to be involved in and I was delighted this last week to hear that Roan is calling out the frankly psychotic behaviour that people display towards her and other celebrities and calling it ‘being a fan’. And what delights me even more, is that Roan is calling out the ‘victim blaming’ response given to celebrities when they request more privacy - as if they asked for their families to be stalked, their friends to be threatened, their lives to be at risk just because they make art.
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Roan is bringing up the issue of parasocial relationships:
A parasocial relationship is a one-sided emotional or social connection between a person and someone they don't know in real life, such as a celebrity, public figure, or fictional character. These relationships are often based on a projected version of the other person, and can develop when someone is repeatedly exposed to a media persona. For example, a fan might develop an emotional attachment to a celebrity and consider them a close friend, even though they've never interacted with them in real life.
She said in an interview with Asia Moore from the LA Times:
“People are starting to be freaks like, following me, and know where my parents live and where my sister works, all this weird s—,” she said. “A few years ago I said if [it got to] stalker vibes, like family was in danger, [that] is when I would quit. And we’re there. … I’ve pumped the brakes on honestly anything to make me more known.”
Although obsessive fandom started with Elvis and the Beatles I think it’s only gotten worse because of social media and the ‘access’ fans can have to their favourite artists’ life. I’m not even a celebrity, but I have had the fans of artists I work with come up to me at shows, in coffee shops, at festivals, wanting to get pictures with me, showing me what some might call intimate parts of their bodies with the lyrics I co-wrote tattooed on them. They’d want pictures with me, want to know how my husband and cat were doing (information they found out through social media), and if I’d go back to Greece next summer on holiday.
There was one fan of an artist I was working with who made a fake writer’s account, signed up to a PRO (performing rights organisation - the organisation that represents the copyrighted musical works of songwriters and composers and collects the money generated from their music) and claimed they’d been a part of writing the songs the artist and I had written because they felt so connected to the songs. They then tried to hold the artist to ransom by saying they’d “leak” the titles of the songs that were going to be on their next album unless they had first hand access to what they release strategy was going to be. Other than that being a huge breach of privacy in so many ways, it also meant all the income from the songs we’d written that the fan was claiming authorship on were frozen for nine months whilst the PRO investigated the issue!
So for me, what Chappell Roan is doing is starting a very important public conversation on what celebrity is or needs to be in order to have a connection with fans that I hope other big celebrities will get behind. I hope it’s one that we can have here on Oh Crumbs, so do leave a comment below with thoughts or feelings on this topic!
And Chappell, in case you’re reading this, I’ve got a song on this subject all ready to go so if you wanted to do a re-release duet with me on Love To Hate, just give me a call. 👩🏻🎤
Quote For It 📜
A little bit of Bob Dylan on the advice his father gave him:
"Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want."
— Bob Dylan’s Dad.
From The Poet Tree 📚
Sticking to the Chappell Roan theme, her tenacity at not giving up and believing in herself and her music after being dropped reminded me of this Edgar Albert Guest poem, Don’t Quit:
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit - rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns.
As everyone of us sometimes learns.
And many a fellow turns about when he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow - you may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than it seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up when he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out - the silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And when you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit - it's when things seem worst, you must not quit.
Peach Picks 🍑
This week, I’m sharing Chappell Roan’s first record The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Whatever happens this weekend, make sure you take everything HOT TO GO!
Thanks so much for following the crumbs with me, can’t wait to share more in a few weeks!
Love,
