Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for YouTube
It has been a big week for confessions in pop music. Chappell Roan stopped by Rosalía’s Lux tour and absolved herself of some tea. In the confessional section of Rosalía’s show, Roan told the story of how she came to write the song “Casual,” without the songwriter it’s about. “I was writing with someone, and we kind of started to flirt with each other,” Roan said. “And then we talked for three months online. This was during the pandemic.” Roan said that for those three months, they were texting and sending pictures, and eventually Roan flew out to Los Angeles for a date. “We kissed and I was floating. I was just so like ‘wow,’ and then I didn’t hear from them in four days,” Roan said. When she finally followed up after four days of ghosting, this anonymous songwriter said they’d met someone else.
So, meeting someone else? Pretty normal. Exploring connections is not a crime, despite what the villa has to say about Kenzie, but it was how this person spoke about Roan later that enshrined them in song. “They met someone within the four days of us not speaking, which is maybe possible,” Roan said. “But then they were writing with another artist — which is normal! But they said to this artist I was friends with that they knew they should be sad and care about me but they don’t. And that they don’t know why I’m so upset because it was just casual.” That word stuck in Roan’s craw, and thus a song was born. Roan finished the story with a little blind-item action. “I’ve never said this story, because they write with some other artists you may know,” she said. “But they said that know it’s messed up, but they can turn their emotions on and off like a faucet.”
So who could this songwriter with the emotional on-off switch of a Vampire Diaries vamp be? Probably not someone who has credits on the finished Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
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