Chappell Roan Calls out Record Labels During Acceptance Speech for Best New Artist Grammy

Chappell Roan won Best New Artist at the at the 2025 Grammy Awards Sunday night, and she used her acceptance speech to fulfill a promise to herself: demand better treatment for developing artists. Taking the stage at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles to accept her first-ever Grammy, the “Pink Pony Club” singer, 26, called out record labels, sharing that she felt “so betrayed” and “so dehumanized” during the early days of her music career.

“I told myself, if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry, profiting millions of dollars off of artists, would offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists,” the singer, reading from her yellow journal, said. “Because I got signed so young — I got signed as a minor — and when I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt, and like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and could not afford health insurance.”

After getting her start in music by uploading cover songs to YouTube when she was a teenager, the “Good Luck, Babe!” singer was signed by Atlantic Records in 2015 when she was just 17. Roan – who took on her stage name in honor of her late grandfather, Dennis Chappell, whose favorite song was Marty Robbins’ “The Strawberry Roan” – went on to release her debut EP School Nights in 2017. Although Roan went on to record one of her biggest hits, “Pink Pony Club,” in 2020, the very song she performed at Sunday night’s Grammys, she was dropped from her label that same year when it failed to generate a profit.

Reflecting on that period in her life before Roan signed with Dan Nigro’s independent imprint Amusement Records, the singer told Sunday’s crowd that “it was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system, and so dehumanized to not have help.”

“And if my label would have prioritized artist health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to. So record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection,” she continued. “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”

After signing with Nigro in 2023, Roan released her debut studio album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, that fall. Featuring tracks like “Pink Pony Club,” HOT-TO-GO,” “Casual,” and “Femininomenon,” the album went on to become a massive hit and launch the singer to pop stardom.

After drawing record crowds at festivals, touring at sold-out shows, and releasing her hit “Good Luck, Babe!,” Roan secured her first Grammy Sunday night for Best New Artist. She beat out a crowded field of new artists including Benson Boone, Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii, Khruangbin, RAYE, Shaboozey, and Teddy Swims. Accepting the award, the singer thanked her fellow nominees, “whose music got me through this past year.”