Chappell Roan’s ‘The Subway’ is an ode to a uniquely New York type of heartbreak : NPR

For those who’re somebody who calls New York Metropolis dwelling — somebody who’s unfazed by rats, cockroaches and unhealthy landlords (know your rights!), who would commerce any Casper mattress advert for Dr. Zizmor’s rainbow, who would by no means wait in line for something you noticed an influencer rave about on TikTok — then the wide-eyed method so many visiting pop stars sing in regards to the metropolis all the time lands far too cute.

To the Taylor Swifts of the world, New York Metropolis is the beckoning playground of vibrant lights and massive goals most mainstream rom-coms make it out to be, a way of promise and romance lurking round each Village or Williamsburg (it is all the time a kind of neighborhoods, sorry) nook. “Really feel so free, really feel so free” the Los Angeles native pop star Addison Rae sang on this yr’s “New York,” hopping from membership to membership after dropping her luggage off on the name-checked Bowery Lodge. On Lorde’s latest album Virgin, she sang of dancing within the glow of venues like Child’s All Proper and the “voices of the ancients” calling out for her within the metropolis streets.

After all New York Metropolis is simple to romanticize. However the longer you are right here, the higher probability you have got of that playground turning into an emotional minefield. New York Metropolis, for all its freedom, additionally requires a way of stoicism and even coldness from its inhabitants — this can be a metropolis the place you’ll be able to cry overtly on the subway with out some well-meaning however incorrect stranger attempting to console you. That is a actuality Chappell Roan will get on her newest break-up track “The Subway,” a track she first debuted stay at New York’s Governor’s Ball Pageant practically a yr in the past, about recognizing her ex on the practice and nearly having “a breakdown.” “It is not over ’til I do not search for you on the staircase, or want you thought that we have been nonetheless soulmates,” she sings. “However I am nonetheless counting down the entire days, ’til you are simply one other woman on the subway.”

It is a far cry from the final time she launched a track in regards to the metropolis, 2023’s “Bare In Manhattan” from The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. There, in a pulsing, ’80s synth-pop quantity that has change into Roan’s specialty, the town was the stage for the singer’s sexual experimentation, and Manhattan’s attract a metaphor for being with one other girl. “It is much like the best way that New York Metropolis makes me really feel,” Roan stated in an interview in regards to the earlier track. “Which is like, excited and form of like, wanderlust, and it is the identical as a woman.” “In New York, you’ll be able to attempt issues,” Roan sings on that track, capturing the town’s seemingly countless array of pleasures and potentialities for her taking.

“The Subway,” launched throughout one of many worst weeks in latest reminiscence for NYC’s public transportation, as a substitute finds Chappell Roan confronted not with the town’s pleasures however its distinctive severity, which is performed up for comedy within the track’s accompanying music video. Rats crawl within the singer’s hilariously lengthy purple curls, which later get caught in a taxi cab door and drag her via the road. In a single scene, she floats in Washington Sq. Park’s fountain like Millais’ Ophelia whereas a younger couple makes out just a few toes away. Partying drag queens and drained commuters pay her no thoughts whereas she’s wallowing in the midst of a subway automotive. Whether or not in love or heartbroken, Roan nonetheless finds the drama and romance within the metropolis’s chaos.

However “The Subway” would not play just like the high-camp, theatrical pop bangers Roan’s been cranking out since turning into a family title in the previous couple of years, pulling as a substitute from the ’90s jangle-pop acts like The Sundays and The Cranberries, letting her vocals wail on the track’s finish not in contrast to the latter’s late lead singer Dolores O’Riordan. However don’t fret, “The Subway” nonetheless retains Roan’s saltier impulses. “I made a promise, if in 4 months this sense ain’t gone,” she sings. “Properly, f*** this metropolis, I am movin’ to Saskatchewan.” In a metropolis this massive, having to see your ex on the subway and faux they’re only a stranger? Appears like New York to me.