Months after debuting the witty country-inflected track “The Giver” on Saturday Night Live, Roan again teased the song
Chappell Roan just gave fans another taste of her country-inflected song “The Giver” — this time via a retro phone number stunt. Roan, who first premiered the country-tinged track during her Saturday Night Live debut last November, offered an invite to a quirky listening party over the weekend, sharing a now-dead phone number (629-468-8646, spelling out “Hot To Go”) in an Instagram story.
The number led callers through a menu of faux services, including dentistry and plumbing, and fans sufficiently dedicated to navigating the phone tree were rewarded with three snippets of the unreleased track.
The SNL performance revealed a song that, aside from the sapphic lyrics, could’ve been a Shania Twain hit, complete with a recurring fiddle riff. “In this strip-mall town of dreams,” Roan sang, “Good luck finding a man who has the means/ to rhinestone cowgirl all night long.” In a spoken interlude, she added, “Only a woman knows how to treat a woman right.”
It’s unclear whether “The Giver” will be part of Roan’s upcoming second album or end up as a standalone single. “We’re just getting started,” Roan’s producer and co/writer, Daniel Nigro, told the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast in December. “We’ve written some great songs we feel really excited about, and more songs will come over time. Chappell has so much confidence in what she’s doing and that always shines through in the music.”
The teaser comes amid industry support for Roan’s “We Got You” campaign, which she launched with the nonprofit Backline after she took aim at major labels for not providing health insurance to artists during her Best New Artist Grammy acceptance speech. Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Lauv, and Noah Kahan have each donated $25,000, as have Live Nation, AEG, and other companies.
