If there are two ladies who’ve ruled pop music this summer, it’s Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, both of whom have experienced mind-bogglingly fast rises to fame.
And in her first Rolling Stone cover story, the 26-year-old “Hot to Go!” artist revealed that the pair have bonded over the pressures that come with the territory of so-called overnight success. “We’re both going through something so f–king hard,” Roan told the publication of the 25-year-old Girl Meets World alum. “She just feels like everything is flying, and she’s just barely hanging on.”
The Missouri native also said that Carpenter suggested meeting up to discuss how overwhelming their year has been so far. “It was just good to know someone else feels that way,” she added.
The interview comes as both ladies have been climbing the charts for months, with the “Espresso” singer recently scoring her first-ever No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 thanks to Short n’ Sweet. She also nabbed her first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this year, with “Please Please Please” reaching the top spot in June.
Meanwhile, Roan isn’t far behind Carpenter, with the “Pink Pony Club” musician’s debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess reaching a new peak at No. 2 on the albums chart in August. She’s also had seven songs enter the Hot 100 since April, including the No. 6-peaking “Good Luck, Babe!”
With the rapid rise to fame, however, comes way more people watching your every move, which, for Roan, has manifested into countless inappropriate interactions with fans that led her to set some boundaries in multiple social media posts in August. And for the first time, Roan went into detail about some of the exchanges that led to her calling out such “predatory behavior” in her posts, telling Rolling Stone that an admirer once grabbed her and forcibly kissed her at a bar. She also had to hire her own security because she has a stalker who once followed her from Missouri to a New York hotel room, and at one point, a man berated her at an airport for not signing autographs.
The good news is, a lot of other female stars — from Billie Eilish to Phoebe Bridgers, Lorde and more — have reached out to her offering support. “I just wanted to humbly welcome you to the s—tiest exclusive club in the world, the club where strangers think you belong to them and they find and harass your family members,” reads a letter from Mitski that Roan shared with the publication.
See Roan on the cover of Rolling Stone below.