"Pink Pony Club" enjoyed largely positive reception amidst the rise of Roan's popularity after the release of its parent album, receiving praise for its musical composition and its story. The song drew commercial success four years after its initial release, charting within the top ten in the charts of Ireland, the top 20 in the United Kingdom, and the top 30 in the United States, becoming a sleeper hit as one of Roan's seven simultaneously charting songs on the Billboard Hot 100, along with "Good Luck, Babe!", "Casual", "Hot to Go!", "Red Wine Supernova", "Femininomenon", and "My Kink Is Karma".[1]
Chappell Roan was inspired to write "Pink Pony Club" after visiting The Abbey, a gay bar in West Hollywood, California, in 2018. Roan, who had recently moved from her hometown of Springfield, Missouri, stated that visiting the bar was "the first time I could truly be myself and not be judged".[2] At the bar, she became enthralled with the performing go-go dancers, stating that seeing them "sparked [something] in me... I want[ed] to be a go-go dancer. So I just wrote a song about it."[3] According to Roan, she had previously struggled with accepting herself in Springfield, stating in Headliner, "I always had such a hard time being myself and felt like I'd be judged for being different or being creative", adding that the bar was "something that I couldn't really have experienced here in Missouri... It was completely eye opening and changed my direction from that point on."[4]
The synth-pop[5] song follows the story of a woman from a small town in Tennessee who moves to Southern California, taking a job as a stripper at a gay strip club[5][6][7] inspired by a local strip club in Roan's former hometown of Springfield, Missouri, that was in "all hot pink".[8] The woman's mother disapproves of the job upon hearing the news, saying to her daughter, "God, what have you done?"[7] However, despite her mother's opinions, the woman opts to stay at her job, stating that "I'm just having fun", having found in what was described in a Capital Buzz analysis as a "safe space where you feel free to be exactly who you are".[9]
The song was written by Roan and Dan Nigro in two days.[10] Initially, Roan's label at the time, Atlantic Records, tried to dissuade her from releasing the song as the company thought it deviated too much from Roan's past songs, leaving Roan "devastated", making her "second-guess herself".[11] According to Roan, Atlantic Records refused to release the song for a year before they relented.[5] "Pink Pony Club" was officially released on April 3, 2020.[2]
Music video
Along with the song's official release, an accompanying music video directed by Griffin Stoddard was released on the same day.[2] The video features cameos from drag queens Victoria "Porkchop" Parker and Meatball.[12][13] Roan, who was visibly nervous in the music video, stated that she was "absolutely terrified" of her performance during production.[4] The video takes place in "a Midwest dive bar", with Roan, Porkchop, and Meatball performing on the bar's stage[14] to a few leather-clad bikers, eventually turning the bikers into "leather daddies".[7] In an analysis by The Conversation's Jonathan Graffam–O'Meara, it represents "the utopic potentiality of performance" for queer people from "the stultifying and oppressive real world that awaits performers and audiences outside of venues".[14]
Critical reception
Initially, the song received largely negative feedback according to Roan.[9] Upon the release of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, "Pink Pony Club" received consistent positive reception. Vulture's Rebecca Alter praised the song, describing it as a "synthy infectious bangarang... It's a stripper anthem that squeezes itself in perfectly with the likes of 'WAP' and 'Twerkulator,' just with a little bit more of a drama-kid kick."[7] In a review of the song's parent album, Pitchfork's Olivia Horn proclaimed "Pink Pony Club" to be a "bold and uproarious pop project stitched with stories about discovering love, sex, and oneself in a new place."[15] Both The Guardian'sKitty Empire and BBC News' Mark Savage credited the song as Roan's first career hit, with both describing the song as a liberating queer party anthem.[16][17]Paste's Eric Bennett described the song as a "immediately memorable artistic statement", praising the song's chorus.[18] In response to the song's success, Roan stated in Capital Buzz to detractors of "Pink Pony Club", "it's like damn bitch, were you wrong? It was the worst time ever to release a gay club song [around the pandemic]. And it still had such an impact."[9]
^Salles, Vanessa (May 11, 2020). "Chappell Roan". The Daily Shuffle. Archived from the original on November 1, 2024. Retrieved October 29, 2024 – via Issuu.
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