If you haven’t already heard, your artist’s favorite artist Chappell Roan pulled out of the All Things Go festival in late September. She posted an Instagram story apologizing to the east coast crowd and stating “things have gotten overwhelming over the past few weeks and I am really feeling it.” She discusses in the Instagram story that she’s feeling pressures from the outside world and needs time to prioritize her mental health. This curated a lot of different responses from fans.
Chappell has been very vocal on Tiktok regarding treatment she expects from fans and her audience. She also has spoken about the political state of the world and claimed “I can not put my entire name and my entire project behind one.” In a recent tik tok posted on September 25th. Roan does not want to endorse any political figure but has been flooded with comments regarding the election and other political policies. In my honest opinion, I believe this is one of the “pressures” she was referring to in the Instagram story she used to cancel the performances. The cancellation made many fans angry, and some fans felt like the cancellation was selfish. Many called Roan “unprofessional” and expressed a misunderstanding of her reasoning behind the cancellation.
As someone who’s gone to many concerts and actually seen Chappell Roan live myself this past summer, personally the last thing I wanna do is see an artist who doesn’t wanna be performing. I have been to shows or seen sets where the artists seemed miserable, and it’s like a shock wave of negative energy throughout the crowd. Making a celebrity or pop artist feel obligated to perform despite personal situations is extremely unfair and very harmful to people’s mental health.
I understand the devastation behind a canceled show. Your finances, and time is affected, and that anticipated moment is now ruined. I think these are all valid emotions to feel, but attacking an artist for canceling a show not knowing what they’re going through behind closed doors seems like we’re painting these artists in an objective light. No matter your talent, or beauty, you are still a human being, not an object put on display to entertain others.
I think it’s important to remember that humanity exists within Hollywood and many artists are still real people with real ongoing problems. It’s easy to glorify celebrities as entertainers instead of just seeing them as people we can relate to. If you’ve ever experienced grief, anxiety, sickness, exhaustion, or pressure, don’t you have the urge to call in sick? Roan just finished another weekend performance in Austin Texas for the first week of the City Limits festival. She will be performing on October 13th for the second weekend and also has show dates happening in Canada starting November 8th. The pop artist has been active on social media since dropping out of the All Things Go festival and I personally cannot wait to see what she does next as she’s an incredible performer and artist.