“Casual” by Chappell Roan

"Casual" first slipped out as an independent single on October 28, 2022, before Chappell Roan folded it into her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, as its fourth single through Amusement and Island. She wrote it with Dan Nigro and Morgan St. Jean, and Nigro produced it with Ryan Linvill, playing electric bass and singing backup himself, with Michael Coleman on the mix.

It's a slow, woozy ballad that borrows from dream pop, new wave and a little country, all wrapped in bedroom-pop haze, and its subject is modern romantic limbo: Roan stuck in a situationship with someone unwilling to commit. It took its time finding an audience, then became a sleeper hit in 2024, one of 7 Roan songs sitting on the Hot 100 at once that August.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.