Chappell Roan Gave the Speech of the Night at the 2025 Grammys
Chappell Roan Gave the Speech of the Night at the 2025 Grammys
Roan spoke out against unfair labor practices within the music industry during her acceptance speech, saying:
“I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here before the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists. I got signed so young—I got signed as a minor. When I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt, and like most people, I had… quite a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and [could not] afford insurance. It was devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system and dehumanized. If my label had prioritized it, I could have been provided care for a company I was giving everything to. Record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection.”
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Stuff like this is why I don't really watch rewards shows anymore. She's not wrong, but I hate being preached at by people who are obscenely rich, just on general principle. The last person I'd listen to preach to me is someone who is famous, obscenely rich, and whining about it every time she opens her Instagram.
Thankfully the performances I want to see are on YT, so I don't have to.
She promised to do this when she was unemployed with no career prospects during the pandemic. These are the issues and sentiments of a poor person, they may be spoken through her now very successful mouth, but the meaning is still rooted in that economic anxiety.
She wasn't preaching at you, unless you're a music executive
There’s a serious issue in FULLY equating wealth with being evil.
Plenty of reasons to hate this fact, but: In our current society, wealth is power. If you demonize anyone with even slightly above average wealth, you are starving your causes of ANY possible power.
I still recognize there is a correlation. Evil, greedy people seek more wealth. But never point to the wealth itself as the evil. Drive the reason, the reprehensible acts and the lack of taxes paid, themselves. Some wealthy people even agree they should pay more taxes.
How dare she address the audience in front of her when she should have been thinking about you, who wasn't in the audience, and in fact not even watching.
You are very special. This industry awards show and its members should have really considered your feelings.
Ok, snark off. Don't watch awards shows. They're not about you, or for you. They're for industry circle jerking.
Eh. There's a difference between those that became rich exploiting other people's labor (see: most of the owning class), and those that used their own labor (see: prolific artists and performers). On occasion, rich people are just normal, good people that came into money. Chappell Roan is one such occasion.
If after earning millions you are still part of the industry you are scum in for profit simple as that.
I wouldnt even be so sure that she is insanely rich. Literally had one very successful album so far, and we dont know the contracts for that, i.e. how nuch she actually got from the money it made.
She's said to be "worth" ~6 mil. So we can estimate that at best she has <1 mil she owns in assets + liquid cash, so on a liquid cash level probably just well-earning, not rich?
I mean that's still al ot of money, but considering how this "worth" is probably based on how much she is worth to a label, I doubt she herself owns that much.
True. Artists are exploited for their labor as well.
I 99% believe in “there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire” with the tiiiiiny asterisk for those who literally create such a cultural artistic phenomenon that they sell through to billionaire status on it alone. Unfortunately, two of the most prominent examples, Notch (Minecraft) and JK Rowling (Harry Potter, obvs) turned out to be total pieces of shit anyway.
Oh well.
Neither Notch nor Joan Roling (I am aware this is not her name, but if she decides others names for them I can decide hers for her) did it on their own. It is literally impossible to do so. Both of them 1) got insanely lucky, 2) got major investment behind them.
That major investment is were the billions actually came from. Its important to recognize "i recieved billions of dollars from shit fucks who got their billions the old fashions way, murder and exploitation, in order to promote my creation and make those billionaires even more wealth" is not the same as "the singular work of art that I produced generated a billion dollars of value for me without accepting tremendous amounts of blood money from the ruling class."
It is not possible to become a billionaire without being guilty by association. You MUST participate in oppression because of the nature of capital.
I mean in that case Roan is 99.94% fine, right?
I think this touches on the concept of labor aristocracy pretty well. But at the point where you're a billionaire, even labor aristocrats would have needed to do some level of exploitation. At which point, they're just doing the same thing the owning class does.
For instance, once you start doing shit like licensing IP (private property is theft; including "intellectual property"), creating fashion brands, perfume, and other forms of "passive income" (A.K.A. stealing from someone else) like that, you're not really profiting off of your own labor anymore. You're exploiting others.
I don't think anyone from labor aristocracy can ever get to the point that they're approaching billionaire status with clean hands (relative to how "clean" one can be under capitalism). But artists like Chappell Roan aren't anywhere close to that, as someone else pointed out.
No, there is not.
Chiming in to agree with you since for some reason you’re getting downvoted… no ethical billionaires. None.
I love Taylor Swift. A billionaire. She certainly gives a LOT back to others, the community ant large, etc. In many ways, I really believe we made the right person famous.
But there’s no justification for her to be a billionaire, she and all billionaires should be trying every day to lower their bottom line, not selling multiple copies of the same vinyl in different colors, as a small for instance.
What about if they can't give their billions away?
Like, consider Swift. She has an extravagant lifestyle, but it's clearly not a billionaire lifestyle. She doesn't own multiple islands, isn't blowing up rockets, stuff like that. She's worth billions, but that also means she could not give that wealth away even if she wants to.
It's a big problem in our modern society that we attribute a perceived, entirely imaginative, form of worth to someone in a monetary number. Being "worth" something isn't "having" that wealth. In particular for artists, where the worth is usually to whoever is making money from selling your work (i.e.: the labels).
I disagree that she cannot give her wealth away.
Many wealthy hold stock and take loans to pay their lifestyle. They can similarly take loans to fund charities.
Taylor Swift could fund charities. She could highlight charities to support. (She may already, I don't know her.)
Edit: I do not believe her "worth" as a billionaire includes potential, but rather what she currently owns.
There is an amount of her assets and such that she couldn’t and shouldn’t be expected to give away. But she gave $1M to food pantries in each of the cities she toured the last 2 years and also gave millions in bonuses. And she probably didn’t feel any poorer. But I think because her dad was in finance and she started so young, many good business decisions were made so that her wealth just compounds no matter what she does.
It should be up to her and her team to allocate which charities and such she gives, sure.
But she’s an American billionaire, and is by design, not taxed as much as she should be, and that is the crux of the entire issue.
But she’s an American billionaire, and is by design, not taxed as much as she should be, and that is the crux of the entire issue.
Yeah that is true of course. #TaxTheRich applies of course.
Lol, so everyone who is wealthy, is just a pile of shit then yea?
One of the things about capitalism is it obscures labour relationships. So an individual person can be a total peach, but because of how our present economic system works, they benefit and perpetuate exploitation of people like wage-labourers, who don't own capital themselves.
This is kind of the sentiment behind the phrase "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism," but of course it applies even moreso to the very very wealthy. They make bigger ripples.
You should put down that phone and anything else that you need for survival then. As the mining labor to make most of the shit you use, is done from the poor. To someone in Africa, you're an extremely wealthy person. To some in china, same thing.
Wealth doesn't magically make someone a shitty person.
Yes that's exactly what I'm saying.
I don't intend to be shitty, and if I met these workers I would be very kind and polite to them.
But because of our system, and my relative wealth, my actions are causing them strife. I'm getting further ahead because I benefit from their exploitation.
I didn't plan that, nor do I want it. I may not be shitty but I'm part of a shitty system.
Do that make sense? I only ask because you brought up poor workers like it might be a rebuttal, no offense. Maybe I'm misreading.
Gotta define terms. "Wealthy" is only "more than me".