Pop star Chappell Rhone wins BBC Sound of 2025

Pop star Chappelle Rhone has won BBC Radio 1’s Sound of 2025 – the station’s annual survey to identify music’s biggest rising stars.

Her triumph caps a 12 months in which she rose from relative obscurity to the top of the charts thanks to her colourful, 80s-influenced brand of synth-pop.

She was named the winner by a panel of over 180 musicians and experts, including Sir Elton John, Dua Lipa and Sound of 2014 winner Sam Smith.

Jack Saunders, host of Radio 1’s New Music Show, said: “Nobody deserves this accolade more than Chappell Rhone. She was the most exciting artist of the last 12 months and is now set to be the artist of the next 12 months. “

An exclusive interview with the singer will be published by Radio 1 and BBC News in the coming weeks.

The 26-year-old player has come a long way to success.

Born Kaylee Amstutz, she was raised in the conservative town of Willard, Missouri, where she attended church three times a week and was taught that being gay was a sin.

He signed his first record deal in 2017 based on the strength of a song he uploaded to YouTube. die young,

Modeled as a singer-songwriter in the style of Lorde and Lana Del Rey, she failed to make much of an impact, and was dropped from her label during the pandemic.

But by that stage, she had already recorded a song that would become her calling card.

Titled Pink Pony Club, it was inspired by a visit to an L.A. gay club, and helped her define a new camp sound, full of freewheeling and solo choruses.

This experience also gave rise to her campy stage persona, which she has described as “a larger-than-life, drag queen version of herself”.

After finding a new record label, she released her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in September 2023.

It was a slow success, selling only a few thousand copies in its first week of release. But word started to spread — and when they played California’s Coachella Festival last April, the crowd was huge for their afternoon set.

More importantly, the show was broadcast on YouTube – it went viral when Roan, leaning towards the TV cameras, announced: “I’m your favorite artist’s favorite artist.” After this the performance was viewed more than one million times.

Around the same time, she released a stand-alone single called Good Luck, Babe, which talked about the experience of falling in love with her best friend.

“It’s a pop song that has a sad element,” He told BBC News last year,

“It’s very common in queer relationships, when someone is still coming to terms with their homosexuality, (that) they will kiss 100 boys to ‘stop the feeling,’ as it says in the song.

“And it’s like, ‘Sure, OK. Your time will come.'”

The single eventually reached number two in the UK charts, and The Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess became a number one album after being re-released on vinyl the previous summer.

Since then, Roan has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, and won Best New Artist at the Billboard Music Awards in December.

He has also experienced the downside of his sudden fame, and he “scary behavior“about some fans who “yelled” and “harassed” him during private moments; and who had contacted his family and friends.

The singer has taken time off in early 2025 to work on new music, but will be headlining the Reading and Leeds festivals this summer.

Previous winners of the BBC’s Sound of list include Adele, Ellie Goulding, 50 Cent, Pinkpantheras and girl group Flo.

Art-rock group The Last Dinner Party had won the title the previous year, topping the charts with their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy.

Runners-up for this year’s award include jazz outfit Ezra Collective and dance producer Barry Cant Swim.

To qualify, artists could not have more than two UK top 10 albums or two UK top 10 singles by 30 September 2024.

The rules were relaxed this year to recognize the challenges of achieving crossover success in the streaming age – when an artist can reach number one without becoming a household name.