Chappell Roan has opened up about the writing process of her signature hit Good Luck, Babe!.
While the success of older songs like Hot To Go! and Pink Pony Club has helped boost the US singer’s profile in the last year, it’s 2024 hit Good Luck, Babe! that really put her on the map.
As it turns out, though, the song was very nearly called something very different.
Speaking to Konbini, Chappell recalled: “Originally, it was not called Good Luck, Babe!. It was originally called Good Luck, Jane!, but my co-writer and I kept getting into arguments about it. So, it became Good Luck, Babe!.”
It’s fair to say fans were pretty happy with Chappell’s final decision:
When Konbini’s interviewer pointed out that the “babe” in the title made the song more ambiguous, meaning Chappell could even be singing about herself, she agreed: “Exactly. I wrote it because I fell in love with this girl, and she started dating this fucking loser of a guy! And I was like, ‘OK, bitch. Sure. You’re not gay. Good luck with that!’.
“And then, it kind of turned into, ‘oh, I think this is a story about me’ – especially the bridge, only dating men prior to the past couple of years, and it would have been horrible to wake up in the middle of the night being like, ‘oh my god, what have I done?’, thinking about that girl that I fell in love with.”
Good Luck, Babe! has proved to be Chappell’s biggest hit to date, peaking at number six in the US and number two here in the UK.
Even more impressively, she managed it without shooting an accompanying music video, and it doesn’t sound like the Red Wine Supernova singer is in any rush to change that.
However, she has brought the song to life visually on several occasions, including an elaborate performance on Jimmy Fallon’s US talk show, and a show-stopping rendition of it while making her VMAs stage debut.