After teasing the song for weeks, and months after its live debut, Chappell Roan has released her new country single “The Giver.”
The lesbian country anthem is all fiddles and kickin’ up dirt, a hoedown about how it takes a real woman to please another woman: “Ain’t no country boy quitter, I get the job done,” she sings on the chorus.
Roan first debuted “The Giver” with a live rendition of the tune during her “Saturday Night Live” performance in Nov. 2024. While the song’s premiere signaled imminent release, Roan instead waited nearly half a year to start teasing the official version, putting up billboards around the country and setting up a hotline that previewed snippets of the tune.
Ahead of the song’s release, Roan told Amazon Music that her pivot into country is out of respect for the genre’s aesthetic. “I wrote a country song not to invade country music, but to really capture what I think, the essence of country music is, for me, which is nostalgia, and fun in the summertime and the fiddle and the banjo, feeling like country queen,” she said. “It makes me feel a certain type of freedom that pop music doesn’t let me feel. I think it’s interesting and I had to do it. I had to do it for myself to know what is it actually like to write a country song and perform it next to ‘Casual’ or next to ‘My Kink is Karma’ or next to ‘Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl’ I just had to do myself justice.”
This marks the first new single from Roan since “Good Luck, Babe!” released in Apr. 2024. That arrived amid the momentum of her 2023 debut album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” which ended up spawning massive hits throughout the year. “Good Luck, Babe!” picked up several Grammy nominations, and Roan took home the coveted best new artist trophy.