Chappell Roan may have dropped “The Subway” and “The Giver” in the last few months, but her next era may still be a ways away. In a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, the pop star shared that she wants to start music for her new era once she feels “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,” she said in the interview. “And then I can think about writing a song once I have a routine.”
Roan explained that, for her, a routine means waking up in the same bed, in the same city, and being able to focus on her music without worrying about her living situation. She opened up about being displaced by the wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year, which forced her to hop between Airbnbs for months.
“I finally got a new place and I’ve only been there for 10 days. And then I came on this big tour,” she said. “So it’s been a journey on how do I release music within the state of everything?”
The conversation came as she sold out a set of shows in New York, Los Angeles, and the Midwest. She also noted that she has shows scheduled for February and March. “I think that once this is done and the U.S. 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,” she said. “But we’re almost done with the victory lap. Next April I’ll be done with the victory lap.”
The new comments mirror what she told Vogue earlier this month. “The second project doesn’t exist yet,” she said. “There is no album. There is no collection of songs … 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 added. “I don’t think I make good music whenever I force myself to do anything.”
During her interview with Lowe, she revealed that her song “The Subway” was actually inspired by Los Angeles, and not about New York as people might’ve assumed.
“It was actually about me hiding in Los Angeles from someone who I was deeply in love with,” she said. “But we weren’t on bad terms, it was just kind of trying to avoid the coffee shops that we went to and parties. And so that’s where it came from, was, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to exist in this city.’ I felt pretty lonely there for many years.”
Roan’s new interview with Apple Music arrived this week during the streaming platform’s special programming, which introduces a new studio space for its hosts and artists visiting the Apple campus in Los Angeles.