Chappell Roan dedicated her BRIT Award win last night (March 1) to “trans artists, drag queens, fashion students, sex workers, and Sinead O’Connor“.
Roan won Best International Artist and Best International Song for ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ at the 2025 awards yesterday. Though she wasn’t in attendance, she used her speeches to show solidarity with other artists while accepting via video.
In her first speech for Best International Song, she highlighted the pressures faced by many of her peers today, saying: “Artists deserve the freedom to write bad songs and to explore horrible concepts and to flop, and rise, and not be pressured into making music based off what’s trending.”
Then, while accepting the award for Best International Artist, she said, “Chappell Roan was born through experiencing queer joy. It’s so special, I had to write an entire album about it.”
She continued, “I dedicate this to trans artists, to drag queens, to fashion students, sex workers, and Sinead O’Connor. Because of all those people – they have laid the groundwork for me to be here today. I did not give up because of them, and I will continue going because of them.”
It’s not the first time Chappell has used her immense platform to vocalise her support of the trans community. At the 2025 Grammy Awards, she paid tribute to trans girls, saying, “I would not be here without trans girls,” she continued. “So just know that pop music is thinking about you and cares about you, and I’m trying my best to stand up for you in every way that I can.”
Likewise, the ‘Red Wine Supernova’ singer made headlines in February, when she used her Best New Artist speech at the 67th Grammy Awards to take aim at record labels and share her past experience as a struggling new artist.
Following her speech, Universal Music Group revealed the Music Industry Mental Health Fund, in partnership with the Music Health Alliance, which will provide mental health services to current and former music professionals across the US, even those not signed with or connected to the label.
The partnership builds upon both companies’ previous four-year healthcare program through personalised recommendations for mental health counsellors, grants to offset costs and funding resource recommendations if necessary to ensure the continuation of care through additional financial and mental health support.
Besides the services provided through the Music Industry Mental Health Fund, the MHA also provides dental care resources, individual and family health insurance, senior care support, vision care resources and more.
UMG and the MHA have in the past served “nearly 1,000 clients and saved them more than $12.5million in healthcare costs” – for more information on the Music Industry Mental Health Fund, visit here.
Prior to that, the singer’s ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ was named as NME’s best song of 2024. “With ‘Good Luck, Babe!’, Roan set out to write a ‘big anthemic pop song’. It was an unqualified success: over subtly insistent synth-pop, Roan serves up home truths to someone desperately trying to deny their queerness,” the entry read.