Capping off a summer of dazzling stardom, Missouri native Chappell Roan took home Wednesday night’s MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist.
Roan’s rhythmic track “HOT TO GO!” played as the “Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” singer, radiant in a chain-mail bodysuit with a hood, brought her diary up on stage to read out her victory speech.
Shimmering brightly and grinning giddily, Roan dedicated her award “to all the drag artists who inspire me … to queer and trans people who fuel pop.”
“To the gays who dedicate my songs to someone they love or hate, and the people who are fans who hear me when I share my joy and my fears,” Roan continued.
“And for all the queer kids in the Midwest watching right now, I see you, I understand you because I’m one of you. And don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t be exactly who you wanna be.”
Wednesday was Chappell Roan’s first time on the Video Music Awards stage. The singer was among 29 first-time nominees. She was also up for MTV Push Performance of the Year for “Red Wine Supernova,” as well as Song of the Summer for “Good Luck, Babe!” and Best Trending Video for “HOT TO GO!”
Roan beat out Gracie Abrams and Tyla for Best New Artist. Runner-up candidates for the award were Benson Boone, Shaboozey and Teddy Swims.
Previous Best New Artist awardees have included Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Cardi B.
Roan arrived on the red carpet Wednesday in what would be the first of three medieval-inspired outfits, complete with a sword.
She has performed at multiple music festivals as her meteoric rise to stardom continued this summer, including Coachella, Lollapalooza, Hinterland and Bonnaroo. She also opened for 24 stops of Rodrigo’s Guts tour and appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk, breaking the internet with a sky-high wig.
Halfway through the show, drag queen, activist and former RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Colby introduced Roan’s performance of summer hit “Good Luck, Babe!”
In a nod to Colby’s tagline, “Your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen,” Colby referred to Roan as “your favorite drag queen’s favorite artist” before referring to her as “my daughter” — a high honor in the drag community, where the House of Colby is wildly popular.
On an elaborate castle set ignited by a flaming crossbow, Roan delivered a sultry performance of “Good Luck, Babe!” while sporting two long red ponytails and a formidable arsenal of medieval weaponry.
With flames roaring in the background, Roan fought for her place on stage, alternately dancing and parrying with a phalanx of swordsmen. She sank to her knees as she delivered the iconic bridge of “Good Luck, Babe!” with fans’ hands extending to the stage in hopes of absorbing an ounce of the Midwest crooner’s medieval glory.
Back in April, Roan told The Star she wanted to honor her Missouri roots in her songs, fashion and music videos. As a little girl, she lived in a trailer park in Willard, Missouri, a town of 6,344.
“There’s this push and pull between like loving Missouri for what it is and then like wanting to leave there so badly because I feel not accepted and just misunderstood because of queerness or like just being like a sexual artist,” Roan said at the time.
In her song “California,” Roan sings, “I miss the seasons in Missouri, my dying town.” The lyrics of “Naked in Manhattan” describe thoughts about a crush as “constant, like cicadas in the summertime.”
She admits to sprinkling “trashy” and “redneck” details into her performances, like deer heads, cigarettes, long nails and a certain middle-America chain of gas stations: “I’m a Kum & Go girl,” she told The Star.
In the music video for her song “HOT TO GO!” Roan performed a bouncy cheerleader dance all around Springfield, Missouri, including in front of an Andy’s Custard shop, where she said her favorite order is a peanut butter and brownie frozen custard concrete filled with hot fudge.
After Wednesday’s VMA performance and win, the starlet will continue the European leg of her Midwest Princess tour with a sold out show in Manchester, United Kingdom, on Friday.
The Star’s Eleanor Nash contributed reporting.
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