Soundcheck with Ethan

By: Ethan Barrocas

A psychedelic dream-pop track with a romantic, theatrical twist that’s even reminiscent of the 1980s is one way to describe Chappell Roan’s newest single, “The Subway.” First teased in June of 2024 at the Governor’s Ball in New York, it was finally released to the world on Thursday, July 31st, 2025. 

 In my opinion, it’s her strongest release thus far–introspective but it gave me a glimpse into a new part of her artistry that I haven’t seen. On surface level, it may just look like another gay love song, but the music video is where she highlights a special motif. That motif being her hair.

While many recognize Chappell’s aesthetic being influenced by drag culture, I remember her most for her signature curly red hair. However, when using those curls as a motif in the music video for “The Subway,” it’s not just to capture the viewer’s attention, it’s to express how hair holds memories. 

It’s a common belief that a person’s hair is an extension of oneself, connecting to inner thoughts, emotions, and overall mental health. Hair is one of the most intimate parts of the body, when you become close with someone you remember how their hair looks, feels, smells, and when you lose that, it’s like losing a lifeline. That’s why one might cut their hair shorter after a breakup, allowing them to lose the tension their hair once held. 

When the music video starts, Chappell walks the bustling streets of Manhattan, but this version of Chappell seems different. She isn’t vibrant, she isn’t the confident popstar the world has come to love. Instead her hair seems to wear her, expressing the memories of the relationship while heartache washing over her from head to toe in anguish. 

We then get a glimpse of another figure, who is the ex. She’s also crestfallen, wearing her own green hair. However, she seems to be more aware than Chappell is and runs away to avoid conversation. Oblivious to all sense of reality, Chappell pursues her, chasing her to a subway station, but arrives too late, as the ex has already left. 

The next scene shows Chappell on another subway, still swallowed up by her hair as she starts to sing the chorus.  Her denial of the relationship increases, as she hallucinates on the train, mistaking people to be her ex featuring a cameo from the iconic green lady, Elizabeth Rosenthal. 

It then transitions into this gorgeous shot of Chappell sprawled out on piles of voluminous hair, rats crawling all over and burrowing into her, showcasing the experiences of her past relationship still haunting her and refusing to go away.

Chappell even uses Rapunzel as a metaphor in the next sequence. Her long hair dangles into the bustling street as she waits on a fire escape. Rather than just going down and moving on, she lets her hair hang, waiting for someone to climb up.

This lingering intensity follows her as she aims to get on with her day and go to work again, sporting a fashionable gray suit with the same long hair. She steps out of the taxi and shuts the door, her hair getting caught in the process. The taxi then pulls her hair and drags her down the road, still showing how Chappell hasn’t let go. Her expression seems more angry as she vocalizes, “If in four months, this feeling ain’t gone/Well, fuck this city, I’m moving to Saskatchewan,” discussing how if she still has a fondness for this woman after all this time, she’ll change her own environment completely. Also, because Saskatchewan has no subways.

Her anger turns to hopelessness as Chappell rides a Citi bike with her hair trailing along in the road, scooping up pieces of debris that represent the remnants of pain that cling on her. Eventually, she stops at a fountain in Washington Square Park and submerges herself in a fountain of her tears.

As a last resort to relinquish herself, Chappell reveals new, shorter hair in an attempt to abolish her grief. It reaches a breaking point in a literal tornado of emotions. Ripped newspapers swarm around her, each article a story of the relationship. The storm swirls between overwhelming feelings of infatuation and desperation as Chappell repeats the outro, “She’s got a way/She’s got away.” No matter how hard she tries, she’s powerless. It becomes too painful, it consumes her whole as she latches onto a towering length of her ex’s green hair that hangs from the sky, back to donning the long hair she wore in the beginning. The cycle of grief she tried to combat crushed her spirit, tearing her energy apart, as it all ends with Chappell sitting in a park, eating a pizza, covered in the heaviness of her hair once again–proof of the damage that painful memories can always find a way to return.