Where was Chappell Roan born? Singer's roots and early years explored

Chappell Roan, a singer-songwriter who has gained global attention for music, bold outfits and white face makeup, moved to Los Angeles as her music career showed signs of taking off.

Originally named Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, Roan was born in Willard, Missouri, on February 19, 1998. Roan's mother, Kara Amstutz, was a veterinarian, while her father, Dwight Amstutz, was a registered nurse in the intense care and burn units and also ran a family practice in Springfield.

Roan was the oldest of four siblings. Growing up, the singer-songwriter lived in a trailer park. She was inclined towards music in her early years and started playing the piano when she was 10 or 11, coming a long way to becoming a global sensation in her 20s.

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Chappell Roan was 17 when she created her first song

As a child, Chappell Roan was raised in a conservative, Christian household, where she attended the church three times a week. Her summer vacations were spent at Christian camps.

Describing her childhood in a September 2023 Variety interview, Chappell Roan called herself "a goody-two-shoes" who "wanted everyone to like me. The Casual singer said:

"I just wanted to feel like a good person, but I had this part of me that wanted to escape so bad. I just wanted to scream.

"I snuck out a lot, but I still went to church three times a week, you know what I mean? So it was just this dichotomy of trying to be a good girl but also wanting to freaking light things on fire."

Hip-hop caught Roan's attention as she was growing up, making her feel "really cool." The 26-year-old also recalled downloading Pandora for the first time, when she would listen to Drake's songs while sitting in her bathroom, adding:

"It was just a brand-new world that I had not been exposed to ever. Hip-hop made me feel really cool, and was a place where I could put all these angsty feelings.

"It still makes me feel that way. The song that sparked me writing music was ‘Stay’ by Rihanna. I was like, ‘I want to make songs like this.’"

Chappell Roan was 12 when she first began taking music lessons and performed publicly for the first time a year later.

She sang The Christmas Song in a talent show hosted at her school, which she won. Driven by the confidence, Roan attempted at auditioning for America's Got Talent the next year.

While the young Chappell didn't clear the auditions, she wasn't too upset about it and started uploading covers on her YouTube channel. While those attracted a few mediocre record labels, she awaited her big break.

In the Variety interview, Chappell Roan confessed that the beginning of her music career was very much fairy-tale-like. When she was 17, Roan created a song called Die Young, which she later uploaded on YouTube under her own name, Kayleigh Rose.

The process of creating the song - which happened when Roan attended a summer camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts - was a professional breakthrough. Chappell talked about it in a November 2023 Qburgh interview:

"I’ve never met creative kids before that camp, and it changed my trajectory forever. I’d never been with other songwriters before in my life that were my age. Everyone was a f***ing hippie, and I’m from Trump country."

She added:

"I’m from a heavily church background, and this is not that. There were kids from all over the world there. It was just so inspiring."

Chappell also talked about being sought by a big record label a few months after Die Young was released.

Atlantic Records signed the teenage singer for five years, which was a big deal. To start working as a singer, Roan completed high school a year early, missing out on experiences like prom and high school graduation.

With the record label, Roan's debut song was re-released as part of her first EP, School Nights.

The singer-songwriter described that era of her career as having a "dark alt-pop girl vibe" in the interview. From her debut EP in 2017 to her debut album in 2023, Chappell Roan eventually found the success she wanted.

The Femininomenon singer is now touring for her album, with the tour concluding in October 2024.