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Having spent over 18 weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2024, Good Luck, Babe! is Chappell Roan's breakout success. The 26-year-old made place for her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, on the Billboard 200 album chart and is currently on a world tour.
Seven of her album's nine tracks, including Pink Pony Club, are on Billboard Charts as of August 21, 2024. The sleeper hit track, first released on April 3, 2020, by Atlantic Records, was re-released in Roan's debut album and has an interesting story behind it.
Pink Pony Club, the title of one of the album's hits, is a real place in Atlanta. However, it did not inspire the song. According to Today, Chappell Roan wrote the track, drawing inspiration from her experience at The Abbey, where she became captivated by a go-go dancer.
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Chappell Roan wrote Pink Pony Club based on her experience at a West Hollywood gay bar
In a 2020 interview with The Daily Shuffle, Chappell Roan was asked about the story behind her recently-released track, Pink Pony Club. The singer answered:
"I went to a gay bar called The Abbey in West Hollywood and was completely changed by the entire experience. I was enthralled by the go-go dancers and thought about how amazing it would be to be one, so I wrote a song about it."
Today reported that The Abbey is one of LA's most famous gay bars. In 2017, it was also on a show called What Happens At The Abbey on E! A year later, Chappell Roan opened up about her experience in The Abbey with Headliner Magazine.
The Femininomenon singer recalled how she had recently moved to LA from Missouri and struggled to find her footing there as a small-town girl. One evening, Roan wandered out on the streets of West Hollywood and ended up in The Abbey.
After she danced the night away in the bar while being completely sober, Chappell said:
"All of a sudden I realized I could truly be any way I wanted to be, and no one would bat an eye. It was so different from home where I always had such a hard time being myself and felt like I’d be judged for being different or being creative. I just felt overwhelmed with complete love and acceptance, and from then on I started writing songs as the real me."
Pink Pony Club was the first track Chappell Roan wrote after her experience at The Abbey, and it was directly inspired by the bar.
Chappell Roan mentioned she hadn't been to the real Pink Pony Club in a 2023 interview with Springfield while revealing the story behind the phrase "Pink Pony" in her song,
"My 'Pink Pony Club' song is literally inspired by a strip club in Springfield. It used to be called Pink Cadillac, but now it’s Centerfolds. The building used to be all hot pink. They had neon signage and it was so beautiful. I remember growing up and passing it because I used to go to Hickory Hills [Country Club.] I always adored it and wanted to go in there, but didn’t realize it was a strip club."
Despite being released in March 2020, Pink Pony Club did not receive as much listenership all year until 2023, when Vulture mentioned it as the song of the summer of 2021. It took the track nine months to hit 10 million streams on Spotify. Three years later, it was re-released as part of Roan's debut studio album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
Chappell Roan hadn't been to the real Pink Pony Club before 2023
Years after the release of Chappell Roan's Pink Pony Club, the singer-songwriter learned about an actual strip club with the same name in Atlanta. Roan brought it up in a 2023 Pop Crave interview when she mentioned "Atlanta" as a city she had never been to but was excited to visit, adding:
"I’ve never been to Atlanta. I’m really excited to do that. I think they have a strip club there called the Pink Pony. It wasn’t influenced. I didn’t know that existed until after, but it was actually influenced by a strip club in my hometown that was a hot pink building. I’m excited to see the actual Pink Pony! That will be so fun."
Soon after the interview, Chappell Roan kicked off her debut headlining tour, Naked in North America Tour, on February 15, 2023. The one-month-long tour consisted of 20 shows performed across the US and was followed by her second headlining tour later that year.
