“Pink Pony Club,” Chappell Roan’s anthemic ode to queer nightclubs, has lived a thousand lives. Before it was included on her 2023 debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, it was released as a single all the way back in 2020. But according to Roan, the song’s story actually began a year prior when she wrote the song on Valentine’s Day in 2019, making this Friday the song’s six-year anniversary.
“The 6 year anniversary of writing Pink pony club is Friday,” Roan wrote on Instagram, along with pictures from her iconic Grammys performance of the song, which propelled it to previously unseen levels of success. “this is unreal girls she is charting for the first time I cannot believe.”
Indeed, this week, “Pink Pony Club” reached a new peak position on the Billboard Hot 100, jumping 27 spots to land at #18, even surpassing Roan’s biggest hit “Good Luck, Babe!” Meanwhile, on the Spotify charts, the song reached a new peak of #4 on the daily U.S. earlier this week. And over on iTunes, “Pink Pony Club” reached #1 for the first time in its five years of release.
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“I know that is kind of controversial for me to say on the Grammy carpet, but I actually think that’s why I’m calm about stuff,” Roan said.
“Listen to people’s advice and wisdom, but don’t listen to who they think you ought to be. You listen to yourself. You follow your way.”
Speaking to INTO in 2022 (already two years after the release of “Pink Pony Club”), Roan talked about the song’s already growing popularity and its status as a queer anthem in the making.
“Queer anthems are needed, and are special, and are impactful,” Roan said. “Queer people deserve to be celebrated just as much as anyone else. And I think it was so impactful to me to go through what I went through for ‘Pink Pony Club’ to work.”
“I had to hate myself and hate my surroundings to understand what it felt like for it to be right,” she added. “If I was always confident and okay with being queer, I don’t think I ever would have written ‘Pink Pony Club.’ It was birthed out of a place of pain. West Hollywood was a place of safety. And I had to go through that transition to even get there.”
Check out Roan’s performance of “Pink Pony Club” at the Grammys below.
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