While accepting the 2025 Grammy for Best New Artist at the awards show on Sunday, Feb. 2, Chappell Roan used the platform to deliver a powerful message to recording industry executives.
The first-time winner called on the "most powerful people in music" to provide artists with a livable wage and health insurance. She also shared her own experience as a struggling artist before her monumental rise in 2024, following the September 2023 release of her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess.
"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 and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists," she 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," the 26-year-old star continued. "It was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system and so dehumanized to not have health[care]."
"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. Labels, we got you, but do you got us?" she concluded.
During her speech, Roan also thanked her "fellow nominees whose music got me through the past year."
She added, "Thank you all who listened to get me here today, and Dan [Nigro] and Island Records, Amusement Records, my friends and my family, and, above all, my Papa Chappell, who I named myself after."
The Midwest Princess received six Grammy nominations this year, including Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance for "Good Luck, Babe!," as well as Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
Other Best New Artist nominees included Benson Boone, Doechii, Khruangbin, RAYE, Sabrina Carpenter, Shaboozey, and Teddy Swims.
Ahead of the Grammys, Chappell Roan had hinted that any acceptance speech she'd give at the 2025 ceremony would be memorable. During her appearance on A Carpool Karaoke Christmas, which premiered last December, she told host Zane Lowe, "I don’t have a speech yet, but you know me. I’m going to say something controversial. Why not?"
