Chappell Roan appears to be teasing that her long-awaited next single, “The Subway,” could be arriving next week.
Ads with a photo of the singer have started popping up on New York City telephone poles (but, curiously, not subway posters) with the text “Going through a break up? Get Bangs!” The photo shows Roan with bangs and a small rat in her hair, as well as a bread clip that reads “Best Before August 1,” leading fans to speculate that “The Subway” could be out next Friday. (Similarly, paparazzi photographed the singer shooting a New York-based music video earlier this month, as seen in the photo up top.)
It’s been a long wait for “The Subway,” as Roan debuted the ballad about seeing an ex on the train back in the summer of 2024, performing the song live at festivals like Governors Ball (where she premiered the track), Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and Austin City Limits. Most recently, she played “The Subway” at the Primavera Sound festival in June.
However, the studio version of the song has been slow to arrive. “I’ve been banging my head against the wall with ‘The Subway,’ because… some songs just work live — certain things work live — and they don’t work in the studio,” Roan told the Las Culturistas podcast in April.
“For ‘The Subway’, it’s just going to feel different, and different doesn’t always mean worse…You just have to really take yourself out of it and be like, ‘This is different and that’s okay.’”
Roan experienced a similar issue with her previous single “The Giver,” which she first performed live on Saturday Night Live before delivering the studio rendition months later.
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“It’s called ‘demo-itis,’” Roan added. “This is to my detriment too, this is to every person’s detriment… I get a demo, I hear it, I play it for my friend, and then I go back in and work on it, play it to them again, and they’re like, ‘I just like the other one better.’ Because you have demo-itis, because you’ve attached so much to this – you attach memories, you attach all of these things – to this one version of the song, but it’s actually not as good as the actual recorded version, straight up.”
Thankfully, it appears Roan has recovered from demo-itis, as “The Subway” will likely reach fans on August 1.
