Chappell Roan Calls This Heart Hit ‘The Coolest Song Ever’ on Ann Wilson’s Podcast

Chappell Roan is no piker when it comes to belting out a tune. But on the latest episode of Heart singer Ann Wilson‘s After Dinner Thinks podcast, the “Pink Pony Club” singer made a bold statement about the number one voice in rock. “You’re rockin’ mama! I’m rockin’ because you rockin’, really, truly,” Roan told the singer of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band.

“I think you have the best voice in rock,” Roan said to Wilson, noting that “nothing” has ever made her feel as powerful as when she sang Heart’s iconic hit “Barracuda” onstage at the Austin City Limits festival in 2024, introducing it as her “favorite song.”

“I was like, ‘actually, this is the coolest song ever. And I feel like a rock star!,” Roan said. Fellow guest Lucy Dacus recalled the pair talking about the cover, with Roan telling her at the time, “I remember when you were like, ‘I’m gonna cover this because I want to feel what it feels like in my body to be a rocker like that.’”

Wilson agreed that it’s a whole different thing to rock out on stage, with Roan saying that pop is fine, but rock, well, it’s a different beast. “A song like that… you can’t hold it in like that. It has to be an independence of the soul where you just let it go and you go, ‘what the f–k? This is a physical event,” Wilson said.

After watching a Heart show before the pod recording, Dacus opined on how most self-described rockers are wannabes who are just pretending, or trying to be a “rock character or avatar. Y’all are just ‘bees,’ you’re not wannabes… they’re trying to be you.”

That comment got Roan going, with the “Hot To Go” singer slamming “b–ches who will never come out on stage. They’re just like, ‘oh! I can’t. My arm hurts!’ Like you are… that is punk!”

Elsewhere in the chat, the three women talked about how style plays into their identity, Dacus asked Wilson is she’d ever considered retiring from music and Roan wondered how the singer handled the huge success and pressure to follow-up Heart’s smash 1975 debut album, Dreamboat Annie, when the group went in to record the follow-up. Dacus also talked about attending a Heart show with her birth mother, with Wilson sharing her moving journey adopting two children.

Definitely stick around until the end, because Wilson opened up about her record label once sending Paula Abdul to teach Heart some choreography, a move that did not go well.