Throughout her career as a queer pop darling, Chappell Roan has worn many hats: a tiara, a camo baseball cap, and now, a cowboy hat.
Roan’s latest single, “The Giver” is a bold country—or rather cuntry—anthem infused with her signature raunchy charm, in a sparkly, gingham package. Channeling the playful confidence of ’90s Shania Twain, Roan delivers a rootin’-tootin’, denim-clad, rhinestone-studded banger that’s fit for the diviest of karaoke bars.
Fans first got a taste of “The Giver” four months ago, when Roan, in a laced-up, baby pink getup with matching cowboy boots, debuted it on the Saturday Night Live stage. Since then, she’s played the ultimate tease, launching an epic month-long rollout.
Roan began hinting at the song in a mid-February Instagram story, encouraging fans to dial 620-HOT-TO-GO—a hotline allowing callers to press numbers and unlock different snippets. Soon after, billboards, posters, and flyers popped up around the country featuring Roan dressed as campy versions of various professions—a lawyer, plumber, construction worker, dentist, and detective—each captioned with a different innuendo-filled double entendre. Boasting lines like “Dental dams aren’t just for dentists!” and “Your wife’s hot! I’ll fix her air conditioner,” it’s safe to say Roan graduated summa cum laude from the Sabrina Carpenter School of Racy Wordplay.
Alongside the song’s release, Roan posted an equally suggestive lyric video capturing the maximalist visuals of ’90s TV infomercials. The video showcases clips of Roan as her aforementioned professions, edited with deliciously low-budget transitions, animations, and pop-ups—perfectly reminiscent of the commercials you might find while channel surfing at 3 a.m. This embrace of kitsch is nothing new to Roan, who channeled a similar early-internet-shabby-chic aesthetic for last year’s “Good Luck, Babe!” lyric video.
“The Giver” kicks off with a rowdy chorus of fiddles, banjos, and drums. While the instrumentation might feel familiar to the genre, Roan’s lyricism reimagines typical country narratives, specifically its brash approach to sexuality, in a queer context. She plays with classic tropes—often rooted in rigid gender binaries—singing, “Ain’t got antlers on my walls / But I sure know mating calls / From the stalls in the bars on a Friday night.” Roan insists that the intimate abilities of even the most rugged cowboys pale in comparison with her effortless allure, knowing exactly how to satisfy another woman. In other words, she can and will steal your girl.
The chorus is equally fun and flirtatious, as Roan takes charge, unambiguously flaunting her role as “a giver” in the bedroom. She’s a serial flirt and a skilled lover (a seasoned professional, if you will) and she wants everyone to know. She makes it crystal clear that her prowess far exceeds that of your typical “country boy” quitter. Confident and commanding, Roan flips the script on the stereotypical country heartthrob, proving she really knows how to get the job done.
Country music’s signature call-and-response style is embedded into the bridge, with Roan’s voice lowering into a sultry whisper as she chants “na-na na-na na-na-na-na” while twangy male voices echo, “She gets the job done.” However, one major omission in the studio-recorded version of the song stands out. During the Saturday Night Live performance, Roan kneeled and stared straight down the barrel of the camera, declaring, “All you country boys saying you know how to treat a woman right? Well, only a woman knows how to treat a woman right!” The line acted as the touchstone of Roan’s playful yet pointed message and, without it, the bridge feels like it’s missing a few rivets.
Although Roan puts an ironic spin on country themes and imagery, “The Giver” is a bonafide country song. It’s not country-pop, and not country-inspired—just country. With the rest of her music remaining in the pop realm, it may seem out-of-character for Roan to take on a true country sound. However, in an interview with Apple Music, Roan expressed that the song was born out of a legitimate love for the genre, stemming from nostalgia for her upbringing in Southwest Missouri. She found humor in the juxtaposition between the song’s lyrical content and sound—believing it was the perfect way to express her identity as a Midwest princess and a lesbian drag queen. She demonstrates that someone with those characteristics can, in fact, “perform a country song,” challenging the perception that queerness and country music are incompatible.
In the interview, she also noted that “country music is so incredibly camp,” with male artists performing exaggerated masculinity through clothing and lyrics—not to mention female stars, like Dolly Parton, donning tall wigs and long nails in a similar vein to the theatricality of drag queens. Perhaps this is why “The Giver” fits so well into Roan’s existing discography, even though it strays so far musically from the synth-drenched hits of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023). Rather than impersonating a watered-down image of country, Roan identified aspects of the genre that are true to herself and her artistry, much like Beyonce’s production of Cowboy Carter (2024). The effect is both remarkably subversive and genuinely refreshing.
“The Giver” is an embodiment of everything that makes Chappell Roan, Chappell Roan. It’s witty. It’s camp. It’s sexy. It’s proudly Missourian, and it’s unapologetically queer. While she has made it clear that the release of “The Giver” isn’t an indication of a permanent pivot to country music, the single proves she has a deep understanding of the genre, masterfully blending its hallmarks with her own glittery flair. More importantly, it’s a testament to her ability to experiment without losing sight of who she is. All in all, consider the job well done.
