NIKI Takes on Chappell Roan’s ‘Casual’ for ‘Like a Version’

NIKI has given Chappell Roan a musical makeover, covering “Casual” for her recent appearance on Like a Version, the long-running segment from Australian radio station triple j.

Airing on Friday, April 10 (Australian time), the performance was recorded in mid-March during the Australian leg of the Indonesian-born singer’s Buzz World Tour. As is tradition, the two-song set launched with an original, which saw NIKI deliver a raucous rendition of her “ female rage” song “Colossal Loss,” which has become wildly popular with her fans despite not being released as a single.

For the cover portion of the set, NIKI turned her attention to Roan’s “Casual,” which had been initially released in late 2022 as a single, before appearing on her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess the following year. As a result of the Grammy-nominated album’s global success in 2024, “Casual” peaked at No. 59 on the Hot 100 in August.

Stripping away the nostalgic synths in favor of a Gibson 12-string and slide guitar, NIKI’s reinvention of the track almost feels like something of a link between Roan’s original and the country-pop of her March single “The Giver.”

“It’s definitely a song that I wish I wrote,” NIKI explained in a post-performance interview. “I love the entire record, obviously, but ‘Casual’ was the one that really stayed with me on a personal level. It’s almost like I feel like I’ve known those melodies all my life, so it just felt very familiar and the production is just so moody.”

“For my version of casual, we decided to speed it up and make it more of like an early 2000s vibe, because we’ve been covering a lot of early 2000s bangers on tour,” she continued. “Just to kind of tie it into that universe of my Buzz tour, we sort of like Buzz-ified it, I guess.”

Having first launched in 2004, the Like a Version series has gone from being a near-impromptu acoustic affair to featuring larger studio productions. Numerous artists have taken part over the past two decades, with the likes of Billie Eilish, Childish Gambino, Arctic Monkeys, and more reinventing classic tracks in the process.