“Midwest Princess” Chappell Roan has taken the internet and the music world by storm this year.
Her single “Good Luck, Babe!” spent 18 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in mid-August—yes, 18 weeks!—and as of August 16, she had a total of seven songs on the chart, including one of her most viral hits, “Pink Pony Club.”
As Roan’s music climbs the charts, we can’t help but wonder: Does the Pink Pony Club really exist?
And it turns out…it is! Well, sort of.
When did Chappell Roan release “Pink Pony Club”?
Roan first released “Pink Pony Club” as a single in 2020. She was later dropped by her then-record label, Atlantic Records, she told Rolling Stone in a 2022 article.
“Pink Pony Club” was then re-released on their debut album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” in 2023 – this time on Island Records and Amusement Records.
What inspired you to create “Pink Pony Club”?
In a May 2020 interview with The Daily Shuffle, Roan said she wrote “Pink Pony Club” after first visiting a gay bar in West Hollywood, California.
“I went to a gay bar called The Abbey in West Hollywood and was completely transformed by the whole experience,” she said at the time. “I was fascinated by the go-go dancers and thought about how great it would be to be one, so I wrote a song about it.”
The Abbey is one of the most famous gay bars/nightclubs in Los Angeles and was even the subject of a short-lived show on E! in 2017: “What Happens at The Abbey.”
Later, in an interview with Headliner Magazine in March 2021, Roan elaborated on that fateful night. Roan said she was struggling to find her feet after moving to Los Angeles from her small hometown in Missouri when she found herself in West Hollywood one evening.
She said she was “sober all night” while dancing the night away at The Abbey.
“All of a sudden I realized I could really be whoever I wanted to be and no one would bat an eyelid,” she told the outlet. “It was so different from home, where I always had such a hard time being myself and felt like I was being judged for being different or creative. I just felt overwhelmed with complete love and acceptance, and from then on I started writing songs as my true self.”
In a video she shared on her YouTube channel in April 2020, she said that something “sparked inside me” while watching the go-go dancers at the Abbey.
“I want to do this, I want to be a go-go dancer,” she says. “So I just wrote a song about it.”
Where does the pink come into play?
Roan is from Willard, Missouri, a small town about 12 miles northwest of Springfield. In an interview with the website Visit Springfield in February 2023, she revealed that the “pink” part of the “Pink Pony Club” was inspired by a now-closed strip club called the Pink Cadillac that she always passed by.
“The building used to be all pink,” she said. “It had neon signs and it was so beautiful. I remember walking past it as a kid… I always loved it and wanted to go in there, but I didn’t know it was a strip club.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com.
