Chappell Roan explains why her second album will take a long time to arrive

Chappell Roan has explained why her sophomore album has taken a while to get started, revealing that she still feels “unsettled” after being displaced by the wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year.

Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music Radio recently following the release of her lesbian heartbreak anthem “The Subway”, Roan revealed that she wants to start properly writing music again when she feels “settled”.

“I want to write music whenever I feel settled. I haven’t felt settled. It’s been a very unsettling year and a half and I think once I really feel calm in a new house and have a routine, I just can’t wait to have a routine. And then I can think about writing a song once I have a routine,” she explained.

The 27-year-old’s meteoric rise to fame in 2024 saw her tour the globe and top the charts, but it also placed her at the centre of numerous online controversies. Most notably, Roan came under fire for calling out “creepy behaviour” from her fans and for refusing to endorse Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.

In January 2025, she was affected by the wildfires in Los Angeles, which destroyed almost 20,000 homes in Los Angeles county.

She told Lowe that she works best when in one place as part of a structured routine. 

“That’s just not a thing right now and it hasn’t been for a very long time. Because since I lived in Altadena and got displaced from the fires and have been living in Airbnbs for seven months, and I finally got a new place and I’ve only been there for 10 days.

“And then I came on this big tour. So it’s been a journey on how do I release music within the state of everything?” she added.

Earlier this month, Roan revealed to Vogue that her second album, the follow up to 2023’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, “doesn’t exist yet” and it may take “at least five years” to create.

“I’m not that type of writer that can pump it out,” she said. “I don’t think I make good music whenever I force myself to do anything.”

Despite a full-length project being a far off prospect right now, Roan is continuing to release music here and there. Most recently, she dropped ballad “The Subway”, about her fixation on an ex lover.

The song topped the UK charts – becoming her second number one after “Pink Pony Club” – and placed at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100.

It became the biggest song by a female artist of 2025 on the Spotify Global Chart, surpassing Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild” and her own song, the country-tinged sapphic bop, “The Giver”.

Speaking to Lowe about how “The Subway” fits in with what she has created so far for album number two, Roan said: “I think it’s a good ring on the ladder. Midwest Princess is her, but even though this next era, I don’t really know what it is, but ‘The Subway’ is a very safe segue to it.”

She continued: “I just think that ‘The Giver’, ‘Good Luck, Babe!’, ‘The Subway’, they’re all kind of so different, so that’s why I’m just like, ‘I have no idea what the next era is’. That’s the scary part of putting out new music and then people not liking it because it’s not like the music you made before, and so it makes you scared to release stuff.”

Chappell Roan is set to conduct a mini tour in America this autumn, with some proceeds being donated to support transgender charities in the country. Yet Roan confirmed that she will continue touring into 2026.

“I’m far from done touring. We got some stuff February and March next year so we’re not done yet,” she revealed.

“But I think that once this is done and the US shows are done, it’ll definitely feel like a big breath of weight off my shoulders just so I can chill for a sec and actually think about writing.”

“The Subway” is streaming now.

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