Imagine working really hard at something for most of your life and never really feeling like that many people were paying attention.

Until one day you wake up, and everyone's cheering your name, screaming your lyrics at you, and you're the biggest artist in the world. That's kind of what’s happened recently to singer Chappell Roan.

She has gone from relative obscurity to becoming one of the biggest pop stars in the world, all in a matter of months.

How does that happen? Is Chappell Roan really an overnight success or is there more to the story?

Chappell Roan is the creation of a singer named Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, a 24-year-old from the U.S. state of Missouri. She’s said Chappell is her ‘drag’ character, a persona she puts on for the stage.

As a teenager, she began uploading songs to YouTube, and was eventually noticed by a major label, Atlantic Records, who signed her onto a contract when she was 17. New Chappell fans might be surprised to know that she was dropped by the label in 2020, right after she released a single you’ve probably heard played somewhere over the last few months called “Pink Pony Club”.

Without the label’s backing, she had to go back to her hometown in Missouri, where she began working and writing music.

Over 2021 and 2022, she built up a loyal following through social media and touring, before releasing her debut album ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess’ through an independent label in September 2023.

Then, Chappell got booked to perform at Coachella – the huge California music festival that’s live-streamed globally – and nothing was ever the same.

Soon, clips from her Coachella performance of a new, ear-wormy song, ‘Good Luck Babe’, became inescapable on TikTok.

This graph, made by music statistics platform Chartmetric, shows exactly how influential that Coachella performance was.

After that April Coachella appearance, ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess’ began appearing on the charts for the first time. In the months since, Chappell Roan’s music has dominated social media feeds, radio stations, office playlists, bars, clubs and pubs everywhere.

Good Luck Babe now has over 500 million Spotify streams and is showing no signs of slowing down. She’s now amassed 44 million monthly Spotify listeners.

Those listeners are not just casual streamers, they are very dedicated fans, showing up in droves to her festival performances in pink cowboy hats, starting fan accounts on social media, and learning the dance for cheerleading-inspired single ‘HOT TO GO’.

Chappell Roan’s meteoric rise has felt unique, but this story has more in common with how other legendary musicians got their start than you might think. Chappell Roan’s Coachella performance being beamed into millions of homes via live stream is not entirely dissimilar to The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

In both cases, the musicians were already successful, but not globally dominant… Until a performance watched by millions catapulted them to a new level of stardom.

The Beatles performed on an established platform that was beginning to feel like a relic of a past time — a black-and-white TV show hosted by a middle-aged man in a suit.

Chappell Roan performed at a festival with slowing ticket sales and a much-criticised lineup.

It’s impossible to say yet if Chappell Roan will reach the historic heights of the Beatles’ critical success. But the level of fandom she’s achieved might already be at Beatlemania levels.

With huge fame comes droves of fans, as evidenced in any Beatles clip from the 60s, where you’re more likely to hear the screaming audience than the music being played. But what happens when you bring fan culture into the digital age? And what happens when it happens to someone very quickly, at such a huge scale?

In an Instagram post this week, Roan said she needed to “draw boundaries” with fans, particularly after one fan allegedly found out her family’s address.

“I feel more love than I ever have in my life. I feel the most unsafe I have ever felt in my life,” she said.

The lack of time to adjust to sudden superstardom is one downside of that speed and level of success. While she had worked since her teens to establish a music career, the size of her fandom has exploded over the course of one northern hemisphere summer. In an interview recorded in June, Roan said her “entire life” had changed “in the past… eight weeks”.

32-year-old Charli XCX, who’s over a decade into her career, might relate — since the release of her album ‘brat’ earlier this year, she’s reached household name status for the first time.

Charli’s ascent has been gentler than Chappell’s, and that’s by design. For her last album, 2022’s Crash, Charli openly indicated she sought mainstream success, posting tongue-in-cheek TikToks she claimed her record label forced her to film and saying this was her “main pop girl” moment.

It turns out that moment was still to come, with her 2024 album ‘brat’. Even if you only listen to ABC Classical, you’ve probably heard of ‘brat’ summer, a Charli-inspired season-long celebration of confidence and imperfection.

‘brat’ energy was even adopted by the social media team for new Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who rebranded outgoing candidate Joe Biden’s accounts to read ‘kamala hq’ in the style of the album cover.

It’s remarkable to think that past and possibly future Presidents of the United States have been briefed on Charli XCX. After years of success and dozens of singles, she’s reached a status few pop stars will – inclusion in political science textbooks.

While I’ve been captivated by the successes of Chappell Roan and Charli XCX over the last few months, I can’t help but wonder if such a moment will be possible for an Australian artist.

That’s not to say there aren’t Australian musicians on the world stage — Charli collaborator Troye Sivan is embarking on a world tour following his third album ‘Something To Give Each Other’, which had its own moments of TikTok virality last year. The success of The Kid Laroi, too, a Kamilaroi 21-year-old who spent time in public housing, is extraordinary and should be celebrated as such.

But when I consider how Chappell, for example, came to fame, I struggle to see the same pathways for new Aussie artists.

Australian festivals are shutting down left and right. Those that still exist don’t typically have the same live-streaming capabilities to broadcast to viewers overseas as Coachella.

Australia’s charts, both streaming and radio, are crowded with international artists who do have access to those platforms.

TikTok is one way of democratising the industry, although it’s not perfect — earlier this year, Universal Music Group removed all of its artists’ music from the platform, citing concerns about AI and compensation, before restoring it months later.

It remains to be seen if any Australian musician can successfully use TikTok as a launchpad to global success.

Hey guys, Co-founder Sam here! Remember when I told you I was going on my honeymoon? Well, the day has finally arrived!

I am off to Mexico today to explore big cities and hidden cenotes (those incredible cave pools you see all over your social media feeds) and stuff myself silly with delicious food.

Up is going to be pivotal to this trip — it’s the way me and my WIFE (still feels weird to say that!) are going to be able to bank overseas without paying fees. 

Travel Mode gives us the ability to toggle our on-screen bank balance to Mexican Pesos while we’re over there is going to be pretty handy for looking at our spending account, and I know that if something goes wrong, it’s super easy to block our card temporarily.

If you want to know a few more specifics about how I am using Up overseas, click here for some more information.

Travel easy with Up.

Download Up for free and use code TDA20 for $20 on sign up.