Every right now and then, I get this itch to drop everything, change my hair, and become a dancing gay Brooklyn bartender à la
Coyote Ugly, never mind the fact that I can’t dance. Thought I might be alone in my disputatious daydreams up until I heard
Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.” The rising pop starlet has been charting her takeover since signing with Atlantic Records as a teen, and the dusty although decadent single is a promising sign of what’s to come. In a rhinestone cowboy hat, Roan begins off slow with visions of “a special place where gentlemen and females can all be queens each and every day,” letting the soft keys give way to a triumphant electronic chorus reminiscent of Kacey Musgraves’s “
High Horse.” Her voice reads hallowed because the halls she sings about, and there’s a palpable electricity in its glitzy video, as she gives a stadium-ready efficiency to an audience of bored barflies. Add in a number of cameos from
RuPaul's Drag Race legends like Meatball and Porkchop, and she’s got me already booking my ticket to L.A. —
Carson Mlnarik