In an age where huge writing rooms of musicians are able to get together and craft multiple hits a day, it’s refreshing to hear that Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe! - released in April 2024 to international acclaim – had a far more tortuous and altogether less business-like birth.
“I always knew there was something unique about her, it was just about getting her in front of as many people as possible,” the song’s co-writer and producer Dan Nigro tells Music Week. “We met through my manager, who was a fan of hers. When we first started writing together, it was a little slow to start with as we were just getting a feel for each other. I remember her sitting on the couch telling me she liked ethereal-sounding guitars, so I started playing some chords. She was chill and quite coy, but she said she liked it. So I made a loop, and she started writing in her notebook. I was thinking, ‘Is she enjoying this?’ I didn’t know what she was doing for about an hour, but I just let her be!
"Finally, she said, ‘I think I have something.’ I was like, ‘Oh cool!’ Then she got on the microphone and sang pretty much the first verse and chorus of a song that became Love Me Anyway [2020].
"I was blown away. I thought, ‘Shit, what a beautiful voice, this person is incredibly talented.’ And from there, it all just blossomed."
Nigro and co-writer Justin Tranter had been working on an idea, which would become Good Luck, Babe! in late 2022. However, with the Chappell Roan machine in full swing and the tracks for what would become her 2023 The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess album being prepped for release, there wasn’t sufficient time or energy to grapple with half a troublesome idea and try and get it on the record.
“In my mind I had to compartmentalise it - it was like, ‘This is a great song but we still have to finish Red Wine Supernova and Coffee and Hot To Go! and all these other things for the album,” Nigro recalls.
“Then, when the album was nearly finished, Chappell and I opened up the song again and were like, ‘Wow, there’s something in this.’ There were great melodies, but the lyrics and some other things needed work. We tried to rewrite a bit, but we didn’t really get into it and put it away again. A few months later, we opened it once more and I realised the key was wrong - it was like this puzzle we were trying to piece together.”
Intriguingly, the song at this point was entitled Good Luck, Jane! as Roan had been insistent that she wanted a name in a song title. “But the more we went back and forth, Good Luck, Babe! just felt more sarcastic and playful, so once we had that, we had so many options for how the song could sound.” says Nigro.
And soon the demo was changing and morphing, becoming more dramatic and overblown as the trio tweaked and fretted over just what was keeping it off target.
“I was a bit nervous about basing the song around strings, because it could become pretty epic that way,” says Nigro. “As we were doing it, though, I was just like, ‘No, this is amazing, we have to go with this.’ I mapped out a quick preliminary string part and then [arranger] Paul Cartwright came in and when he heard my ideas, he was like, ‘I get it, let’s do this!’
“With Good Luck, Babe! I'd worked on it for so long and had been listening to it over and over... I got so hung up on the little things. At that point I had to just be like, ‘Right, I’m done!’
“I try not to have too high expectations for songs, because there’s always room for let-down. But with Chappell’s career, it felt like we were going step by step and Good Luck, Babe! was going to be an amazing way to kick off the next part of it.”
An interesting by-product of the song’s long gestation and collaborative tweaking process is the song’s unusual choice of key. It could be argued that the song is pitched too low for Roan in the verses. She’s essentially denied the opportunity to flex any power in her performance, coming across as moody, coy and just a little fed up.
“A lot of it is this kind of dance that we’re doing. What note is full voice? What note is falsetto?" Nigro told Mix With The Masters.
And with the verse and chorus essentially being the same it would have been easy for the song to maintain its downbeat plod… But instead there’s a burst of sunshine.
Roan leaps up the octave in the chorus. Suddenly she’s testing her range, sounding edgy and exciting, and lands like the sun has just come out.
Nailing the basics
“The hard part with writing is getting what I call the ‘meat and potatoes’ down – the vocals, the lyrics, the emotion. So once we nailed those things, the other stuff came easily, especially things like the bridge. But I do get pretty hung up in my head about things like song transitions, how good it feels when the chorus hits, that kind of stuff,” says Nigro.
And soon the trio knew they had a hit on their hands.
“Chappell was on tour when I sent it to her and she thought it was great. Then we sent it to the label, and no one had any notes. That kind of scared me - I thought, ‘Are they just trying to be nice?’ People like to have notes normally [laughs], but it was definitely gratifying when people seemed to like it."
And the song has one more terrific twist in its tale. If you’d been just tapping a toe and humming along until the song’s closing moments at 3:18 then that’s exactly when you’d sit up, take notice and demand, 'Who the hell is this?'
At that point, Good Luck, Babe! not only shifts in tempo, but also drops in pitch, with Roan tracking the ‘broken turntable’ backing track like it’s all part of the plan.
“She has such a confidence in who she is and what she wants out of a track and her performances,” explains Nigro. “Her songs are just classics. They’re tracks you want to listen to, that you want to play. That, with her dynamic live show, her stage presence, her outfits... people become enthralled by her.”
