After debuting the song at the Governors Ball festival last year, Chappell Roan has returned with a new single called ‘The Subway.’ The song, which recounts the feelings of running into an ex in public, was too personal for the songstress to release when she first presented it.
In a new interview with Vogue, Roan says it was too painful and that she was too “angry and scared—just about my life—to put it out.”
“I was having a hard time getting over this one person, and I just could not get over them,” she told interviewer Hannah Jackson. “When I was writing, I was constantly trying to be like, we’re done, we’re done, we’re done, we’re done. The feelings are still there, even though we’re done.”
‘The Subway’ marks Roan’s second single this year, but fans may be disappointed to hear that a follow-up to her 2023 breakout album, ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,’ is not yet on the horizon. Roan clarified that the “second project doesn’t exist yet.”
“It took me five years to write the first one, and it’s probably going to take at least five to write the next. I’m not that type of writer that can pump it out,” she says. “I don’t think I make good music whenever I force myself to do anything. I see some comments sometimes, like, ‘She’s everywhere except that damn studio.’ Even if I was in the studio 12 hours a day, every single day, that does not mean that you would get an album any faster.”
Until then, we can enjoy ‘The Subway’ for all its glory. The song has a dream pop vibe set up by arpeggiated guitars on the intro. Roan is known for her impressive range, but she draws listeners into the intimacy of her feelings by dropping the dynamics to a near whisper during the post-chorus.
Get inside ‘The Subway’ with the official score.
