2026 Grammy Nominee - Chappell Roan - "The Subway"

0:03 Callaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fischer. And in mid twenty twenty four, Chapel Roane had a problem. She'd written a song called The Subway with her longtime collaborator Daniel Nigro. It was about heartbreak, healing, and those moments on public transportation where you think you see someone who broke your heart and for a second everything rushes back. The song was beautiful, dream pop guitars, shoegaze textures, that jangly nineties alternative rock sound that Ron and Nigro had been experimenting with, lyrically intimate but emotionally devastating. One of the best things she'd ever written. She started performing it live at her shows and her fans went absolutely insane for it, which created the problem. How do you release the studio version of a song that thousands of people have already memorized from concert bootlegs. How do you meet expectations when fans have built up this live version in their minds as perfection.

1:07 Chapel Rone was terrified, Terrified that the studio recording wouldn't match what people had imagined, Terrified that she disappoint the very fans who loved the song. So much they were begging her to release it. So she waited and waited, and as she waited, the Subway became something bigger than just an unreleased song. It became a phenomenon. Let's back up, because to understand why the Subway matters, why it debuted at number three on the Billboard Hot one hundred, became her first UK number one, and earned a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year. You need to understand Chapel Roone's journey and how unlikely all of this was. Kayleie rose Amstuts grew up in Willard, Missouri, population five thousand.

1:57 She started writing songs as a teenager, posting videos to YouTube. In twenty seventeen, when she was just nineteen, she signed to Atlantic Records and released Good Hurt under the name Chapel Rone, her stage name, combining her grandfather's name with her favorite song by The Smiths. That first single got some attention. It seemed like a career was launching, except it wasn't. The label didn't know what to do with her. Her sound was still forming. She was young, figuring herself out artistically and personally. By twenty twenty, Atlantic had dropped her chapel Rone was twenty two years old, with no record deal and no clear path forward. She could have quit, a lot of artists would have. Instead, she linked up with producer Daniel Nigro, who'd worked with Olivia Rodrigo on Sour, and started making the music she actually wanted to make, queer synthpop with eighties influences, theatrical, emotional, unapologetically herself. She released her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess independently in September twenty twenty two. It didn't immediately explode. Success came slowly through relentless touring, through TikTok, through word of mouth. Songs like Pink Pony Club and Good Luck Babe became cult favorites. By twenty twenty four, chapel Rone had gone from drop by her label to playing Coachella, opening for Olivia Rodrigo, headlining her own sold out tours. She'd become an LGBTQ plus icon. Her shows

3:31 were spectacles, drag inspired makeup, elaborate costumes, fans dressed in homemade recreations of her looks, and she was working on new music for what would become her second album, The Subway emerged from writing sessions in late twenty twenty three and early twenty twenty four. Ron and Nigro had been exploring a different sonic direction from Midwest Princess. That album was synth heavy, bright, explicitly Eighties influenced. For the new material they were pulling from nineties alternative rock, dream pop, shoegaze bands like The Cranberrys The Sunday's Mazzi star artists who combined jangly guitars with ethereal vocals music that felt both intimate and expansive. The Subway fits perfectly into that aesthetic.

4:18 The production features layered guitars with chorus effects, creating that shimmering, dreamlike quality. Roane's vocals are mixed close but surrounded by space. The rhythm section is steady, but not driving. It's walking pace, the pace of someone moving through a subway car looking for a familiar face. Lyrically, the song is devastating in its specificity. It's about being in New York City, trying to move on from a relationship, and constantly thinking you see your ex on the subway, on the F train. Specifically, Rone sings the actual train line, the bridge contains the line that would become iconic. I I made a promise if in four months this feeling ain't gone, well, fuck this city. I'm moving to Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan, not Los Angeles, not London, not Paris, Saskatchewan, the Canadian prairie province that most Americans couldn't locate on a map if their lives depended on it. It's such a specific, unexpected choice, and it's funny, which cuts the emotional intensity just enough to keep the song from becoming too heavy. You're crying about heartbreak, and then suddenly you're laughing at the absurdity of threatening to move to Saskatchewan. Rona said. The lyric came from a real conversation she had with herself during a difficult breakup.

5:41 When you're heartbroken in a big city, sometimes you fantasize about just disappearing to somewhere nobody would think to look for you. Saskatchewan became that place. Musically, the song builds gradually. It starts quiet, almost tentative, just vocals and guitar, then layers ad base, drums, additional guitars, vocal harmonies. By the final chorus, You're in this wall of sound. But it never feels overwhelming. It feels like emotional release. Daniel Nigro's production is crucial here. Nigro has a gift for creating space and arrangements, for knowing when to add and when to pull back. The guitars have that jangly, slightly distorted quality that's pure nineties alternative rock. There are shoegaze elements, those swirling effects, heavy guitars that create texture rather than melody.

6:33 But underneath all of it, the song remains fundamentally a pop song verse chorus, verse structure, a memorable hook, lyrics you can sing along too. Nigro and Roan understand that experimentation works best when it's grounded in strong song craft. Chapel started performing The Subway live in mid twenty twenty four during her summer tour dates. She'd come out, maybe mentioned she had a new song, and then lawn into it. The crowd response was immediate and intense. People were filming it on their phones, posting it to TikTok and Twitter. Within weeks, there were compilation videos of different performances. Fans were learning the lyrics from bootlegs, singing along at subsequent shows.

7:16 The Saskatchewan line became a meme. People started posting about actually visiting Saskatchewan. The province's tourism board even got involved, joking about Chapel being their new unofficial ambassador. And Ron watched all of this happening and got more and more nervous about actually releasing the studio version. She talked about this anxiety and interviews later. The live version had this raw energy, this immediacy. People loved it partly because it felt like a secret, like something special. They discovered what if the studio recording felt too polished, too produced, what if it lost whatever magic the live performances had. But her label and management were pushing her, You have a song that it's already a hit and it's not even officially released yet. Put it out, capitalize on the momentum.

8:06 So Rone did something unusual. She dragged out the rollout for almost a year. She kept performing it live through the fall of twenty twenty four. Each performance was slightly different, sometimes more guitar heavy. Sometimes she'd change the phrasing of a line, Sometimes she'd extend the instrumental sections. She was using the live shows as a testing ground, figuring out exactly what the song should be. Meanwhile, she launched a gorilla marketing campaign in New York City. In early twenty twenty five, mysterious posters started appearing in actual subway stations, just the lyrics fuck this city, I'm moving to Saskatchewan, and various fonts and colors, no artist's name, no release date, just the line if you knew, you knew, and Rone's fans definitely knew. The posters became Instagram fodder, TikTok content, and people were hunting for them, taking pictures posting their locations online. Ron loved it. It was playful, interactive, building anticipation without being heavy handed, and it kept the subway in conversation without actually releasing the song yet. Finally, on July eighteenth, twenty twenty five, the studio version dropped. The reaction was relief because Ron and Nigro had nailed it.

9:27 The studio recording captured everything that worked about the live performances, while adding production polish that elevated the song. The guitars had more texture, the vocals were mixed with more nuance, there were layers you couldn't hear in live bootlegs, and crucially, Roan's vocal performance on the studio version was remarkable. She didn't try to replicate what she did live. She sang it differently, more vulnerable in some moments, more powerful than others. It was the same song, but it was a new interpretation. The song debuted at number three on the Billboard Hot one hundred Chapel, Roan's highest charting single ever, higher than Good Luck Babe, which had peaked at number seven, higher than Pink Pony Club, which maxed out at number forty nine.

10:15 In the UK. The Subway went straight to number one, Ron's first UK chart topper and only her second song to chart there at all. The accompanying music video, directed by Ron's frequent collaborator Hailey Appel, leaned fully into the New York City subway setting. Roan wanders through subway cars, platforms, tunnels. She's looking for someone who isn't there. Other writers fade in and out of focus. The lighting is fluorescent, harsh, exactly like real subway lighting, but there are surreal elements too. At one point, the entire subway car is full of people wearing Roan's face as masks. Another moment shows her standing on the platform as trains rush by, and each train window shows a different memory, a different version of the person she's lost. It's artistic without being pretentious. It serves the song rather than overwhelming it. The video also included shots filmed in Saskatchewan. Ron actually went there, filmed herself walking through prairies under enormous skies. The landscape empty and beautiful and the exact opposite of New York City's density.

11:27 Saskatchewan's tourism board absolutely ran with this. They created a whole campaign around Chapel Roan, Saskatchewan, featuring the locations where the video was shot. Tourism to the province increased twenty three percent in the months following the video's release, twenty three percent. Because of one line and a pop song about heartbreak, it became a running joke in Roan's shows. She'd get to that line in the song and the entire arena would scream Saskatchewan along with her. She started wearing t shirts with Saskatchewan Imagery during performing, and she even partnered with a Saskatchewan based LGBTQ plus advocacy organization donating a portion of merchandise sales. What started as a throwaway line about escaping became this beautiful, unexpected connection between a queer pop star and a Canadian province. Musically and thematically, the Subway connects to earlier Chapel Roone songs, particularly Casual from Midwest Princess. Both songs deal with complicated relationships, with trying to move on, with the messiness of modern dating and heartbreak. But the Subway is more mature, more refined.

12:38 Casual was sharp and bitter. I hate that I let this drag on so long. You can say that we're nothing, but you know the truth. The Subway is softer, sadder, more resigned. The anger has faded into melancholy. It's the sound of someone who's been through heartbreak enough times to know that it eventually passes, but who's still in the middle of it and can't quite see the other side yet. The song also represents Rone's growth as a vocalist. She's never been a technical powerhouse. She's not doing Christina Aguilera runs or Ariana Grande whistletnes, but her emotional delivery has become so sophisticated. The way she sings four Months. There's this weariness in it, this exhaustion at having to weigh out your own feelings. In September twenty twenty five, Ron performed The Subway on Saturday Night Live. The staging was simple, her a microphone, Daniel Negro on guitar, a small band, no elaborate costumes, no drag makeup, just Rone in a simple outfit singing the song. It was the most stripped down she'd ever been on national television, and it was devastating.

13:52 You could hear every nuance in her voice. The performance went viral, with people praising her vulnerability and vocal control. On November seventh, twenty twenty five, The Subway was nominated for Record of the Year at the sixty eighth Annual Grammy Awards. For Ron, this was massive, her first Grammy nomination in a general field category, recognition that she wasn't just an indie darling or a TikTok phenomenon. She was making music that the industry considered among the year's best. The nomination also validated her decision to wait to release the studio version. She could have rushed it out in twenty twenty four tried to capitalize immediately on the live buzz. Instead, she took her time, got it right, and created something that resonated broadly enough to earn a Grammy nomination. What makes the Subway work is its specificity. It's not a generic song about missing someone. It's about missing someone in New York City on the I've trained specifically during a specific emotional period in your life, when you've given yourself a deadline for healing. That specificity makes it universal. Everyone has had that experience of thinking they saw their ex somewhere, of bargaining with themselves about how long they'll let themselves feel.

15:18 This way of fantasizing about escaping to somewhere completely different Saskatchewan is funny because it's so random, but it's also perfect because it represents that universal impulse to just disappear when you're hurting. The song's success also speaks to changing tastes in pop music. In twenty twenty five, straight ahead dance pop wasn't dominating the way it had in previous years. Artists were experimenting with nineties rock influences, with shoegaze, with dream pop. Roan's decision to go in that direction with her second album positioned her perfectly for where pop music was heading, and the fact that she was openly queer that her fan base was heavily LGBTQ, plus that she'd become this icon for young queer people. None of that hurt, If anything, it amplified the song's impact. Queer heartbreak sounds the same as straight heartbreak, but having an openly queer artist singing about it on mainstream radio felt important. By the time the Grammys rolled around in February twenty twenty six, the Subway had spent months on the charts. It had been streamed hundreds of millions of times, It had launched a thousand tiktoks and memes. It had somehow made Saskatchewan a pop culture reference point. More importantly, it had proven that Chapel Rone wasn't a one album wonder Midwest Princess could have been a fluke. The Subway showed she could evolve, experiment, take risks, and have them pay off. The year long rollout that had terrified her ended up being perfect. By

16:49 the time the studio version dropped, demand was so high that it couldn't help but succeed, and the song itself was good enough to justify the weight. Ron has said an inner that making the Subway taught her to trust herself more to trust her instincts about when a song is ready, about what feels right artistically, even if it doesn't make sense commercially. The fact that the commercial success followed anyway that trusting her artistic instincts led to her biggest hit. That's the ideal outcome. That's the dream for any artist. Daniel Nigro told Billboard that working on the Subway reminded him why he loves producing. When an artist knows exactly what they want and isn't afraid to take their time getting there, that's when magic happens. Chapel knew this song needed to be perfect, and she wouldn't settle.

17:39 The guitar work on the Subway is Nigro at his best, those jangly, chorus heavy guitars that sound like the Sunday's Meeting Soccer Mommy. The production is lush but never cluttered. Every element serves the song, and Roan's lyric about Saskatchewan, the throwaway line that became a phenomenon, shows her strength as a song The best lyrics are specific and surprising. Generic heartbreak songs say I want to run away. Great heartbreak songs say I'm moving to Saskatchewan. On Grammy Night, The Subway will be up against some of the biggest names in music. Whether it wins or not, chapel Rone had already achieved something remarkable. She'd taken a song her fans love from live performances, translated it to a studio recording that honored their connection to it, and turned it into a legitimate hit that earned industry recognition. The Subway is a liminal space. You're between destinations, neither here nor there, and that's exactly what the Subway. The song captures that in between state of heartbreak where you're not quite over someone, but you know eventually you will be. You're on your way to healing, but you're not there yet. Four months Saskatchewan, The f Train a promise made to yourself in a moment of pain, captured in a pop song that made people feel seen. Chapel Roone was terrified to release it, but she did, and it became her biggest song, and that's its own kind of magic. Next week on Hitpmaker Chronicles,

19:12 we close out our Grammy countdown with Billie Eilish's Wildflower, the apology that became the longest charting song ever. How Consoling a friend after a breakup led to dating the X, why the Wildflower metaphor cut deeper than anyone expected, and what it means to break streaming records with a song about guilt. I'm Garrett Fischer. Take your time, even when people are begging you to hurry