Chappell Roan's Homecoming: The Rise and Fall of a Saturn-Ruled 4th House
If you're reading this, you're gay. I don't make the rules.
If you don’t already know who Chappell Roan is, you’re going to be made well aware of her existence within the next year. She’s a queer pop powerhouse, hailing from the Midwest, who came into her own in the glittering drag scene of pandemic-era Los Angeles. Her music career is on a speedy trajectory towards stardom, but this hasn’t always been the case.
The Rise of Chappell Roan
Chappell is a Pisces sun, Sagittarius moon, and Libra rising, with her chart ruler, Venus, residing in Capricorn, her 4th house. In other words, Chappell is what I affectionately call a 4th houser: anyone with a high concentration of 4th house placements and/or their chart ruler in the 4th house of their natal chart—or really, anyone who feels a strong connection to their own 4th house. We have this information thanks to Chappell herself, who shared a list of her placements on her TikTok, which was then loosely rectified based on the house division in the original image she posted. I’m a whole sign girlie, so this is the chart I’ll be using for the purposes of this piece, with the estimated birth time:
Though the degrees of the angles here won’t be exact, we can quickly observe that her chart ruler Venus, in addition to being in her 4th house, is also very close to her IC, or Imum Coeli. Pallas Augustine describes the IC as a place of belonging, which is going to be an important theme in the story of Chappell Roan’s success.
Another notable aspect of Chappell’s chart is her moon-Pluto conjunction in Sagittarius, her third house. This moon, which rules her Midheaven and thus influences her public reputation, tells a story of subversion and transformation that has ultimately led to her burgeoning fame. More on that later.
While growing up in rural Missouri, Chappell was exposed to a very conservative Christian culture—the middle of the United States has garnered the nickname “The Bible Belt” for good reason—and experienced a lot of strife and depression during her teenage years, especially in her home life. “I didn’t have the best relationship with my parents,” Chappell says of this period. “I would lie to them about where I was and what I was doing. It really damaged the trust between us.”
Chappell’s first EP, School Nights, was released on September 22nd, 2017, and through its mature lyrics and dark, moody arrangements, it’s pretty obvious that young Chappell was Going Through Some Things. “I was thinking about death a lot around this time. I was depressed and confused about a lot of things,” said Chappell. These five songs explore themes like: fearing death, feeling alone in the world, having unsatisfying sex with guys, the boredom of being in a non-toxic relationship, telling a partner you love them when you don’t, and just a general sense of malaise and agony that seems far too heavy a burden for someone so young to bear. Her transits for the date of this release tell a similar story:
When School Nights was released, there was a stellium of planets in Chappell’s 12th house. The 12th house is a place in the natal chart that speaks of isolation and self-undoing, so it makes sense to see these themes reflected so heavily in this EP. The 12th house is also where Saturn rejoices, and this is where things get interesting.
Though Saturn at the time of her EP’s release was in the final decan of Sagittarius, a safe distance from Chappell’s moon-Pluto conjunction at 7 degrees Sagittarius, the influence of this malefic planet is all over School Nights—and the beginnings of Chappell’s period of self-discovery, or homecoming, as I call it.
If we assume that Chappell was writing and recording the songs on School Nights in the 2-3 years immediately preceding its release, then she would have been experiencing transit Saturn conjunct her Sagittarius moon during a large chunk of the process. Saturn transits to your natal moon are times that are typically marked by “loneliness, feeling unsupported, struggling to manage extra pressure or responsibilities, and wondering how much longer you can manage with the weight of a current situation,” according to Kelly Surtees. While a conjunction is a particularly potent aspect, there’s also the opening square, where Saturn is 3 signs ahead of your moon; the opposition (6 signs away), and the closing square (3 signs behind your moon). These transits all take place over a single Saturn cycle, which lasts 28-30 years.
Saturn is the planetary ruler of Chappell’s 4th house—also known as her L4. While Saturn was in Sagittarius, it was sitting exactly one sign behind her 4th house, Capricorn. In derivative houses, the 3rd house can be conceptualized as the 12th house of the 4th house. The layering of house meanings in this way is what makes derivative houses so much fun, but I digress. This “12th house aspect” doubles down on the Saturnian significations of this time period for Chappell: if the 4th house is where you come home to yourself, and the 12th house is where you’re unable to see yourself clearly, then School Nights exemplifies a period of teenage isolation and wanting to know one’s self deeply, but lacking the proper awareness or tools to do so.
In the months leading up to the release of School Nights, Chappell traveled (along with her parents) back and forth from Missouri to New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville in order to support her honing her musical craft. While this certainly gave her a leg up, it also resulted in an accelerated loss of innocence for Chappell, which is another 12th house theme: “I didn’t know the consequences of how much I had to sacrifice. I didn’t do my senior year. I didn’t go to prom. I didn’t go to graduation. I missed a lot of what would have been the end of my childhood to do this job.”
The swift transition from adolescence to adulthood continued for Chappell when she moved to Los Angeles by herself at the beginning of 2018. She’s been quoted numerous times discussing the difficulty she had expressing her authentic self in the Midwest: “I felt so out of place in my hometown. I wish it was better. I wish I had better things to say. But mentally, I had a really tough time.” For Chappell, moving to Los Angeles seemed like a natural next step in her music career, but astrologically speaking, the next 5 years would be a period of huge 4th house activations for her, underscoring the intense personal revolution she was about to experience.
2018-2019: The Underground Years
In my years of research and practice within the 4th house, the theme of “homecoming,” or coming home to oneself, has emerged loud and clear. Anyone can do this work (not just 4th housers), and it’s important to know that it’s not necessarily about a physical place called “home,” but rather the feeling of home and how each of us can cultivate that feeling inside of ourselves. In Chappell Roan’s journey thus far, her move to Los Angeles opened up a world of possibility and expression for her, allowing her to come home to herself—but it wasn’t always a cozy process.
“LA is difficult for anyone who moves here for the first year especially. I had a difficult time making friends. LA is hard. It's expensive. I wanted to go home 1000 times,” said Chappell about her initiation to life in Southern California. Though she initially went on tour with Declan McKenna in early 2018 and seemed to be gathering momentum, Chappell’s Instagram went completely dark for over 18 months after she arrived in California. This period is what I refer to as Chappell’s underground years.
On the day of her final post, April 2, 2018, Mars and Saturn were forming an exact conjunction in Chappell’s 4th house. The confluence of these super-powered malefic energies (Saturn is at home in Capricorn and Mars is exalted in Capricorn), alongside Pluto transiting her natal Venus at the same time, sheds some light on the heaviness and darkness of that time.
In the process of homecoming, most people experience a period of self-exile, or self-imposed isolation, that allows them to retreat even further into themselves. The 12th house, where Saturn rejoices, signifies isolation and exile, but the difference with the 4th house is the amount of agency and self-determination you have. 12th house isolation is usually experienced against your will, but 4th house self-isolation is done as an act of self-protection, protest, or as a means of getting closer to yourself.
Getting comfortable with solitude is a core tenet of 4th house work, so while I can’t pretend to know what Chappell was going through during her underground years, the choice to remove herself from social media can absolutely be seen as a form of retreat or self-exile. On top of that, Saturn was about to form a closing square to her natal Saturn, ushering in a period of distinctly Saturnian experiences that directly impacted Chappell’s inner world—delay, deprivation, isolation, limits, boundaries, and harsh realities.
Though Chappell often speaks of her time in Los Angeles as a time that opened up her world, that outcome seems to be hard-fought. “I feel allowed to be who I want to be here. That changed everything,” she says, citing her experiences as a young adult in West Hollywood, being welcomed with open arms by the drag community and openly exploring her queerness for the first time. “I just felt overwhelmed with complete love and acceptance, and from then on I started writing songs as the real me.”
This is a fitting thing to say for someone experiencing a personal homecoming, but we can also see this reflected in the first post Chappell made when she did eventually return to social media, on December 13th, 2019:
A note from Chappell reads, “Hi! I’ve been gone for a while because I needed time to gather myself so I can create things I love,” in her own purple handwriting, surrounded by a border of hand-drawn pink and purple hearts. It seems that Chappell was able to do some valuable inner work during her time of self-exile and was now preparing to re-introduce herself to the world. In other words, Chappell’s homecoming had begun. And, as the world was about to discover, she had also been hard at work creating music with a refreshingly authentic, pop-forward sound.
When Chappell made her first Instagram post after more than a year and a half of radio silence, she was having her Venus return in Capricorn, which just so happened to be conjunct Saturn. This is a stark contrast to the astrology of Chappell’s exit from the public eye, which had Mars conjunct Saturn. Jupiter, the ruler of Chappell’s natal sun, is also in her 4th house in this new chart, emphasizing how much Chappell was truly coming into her truest expression from a place of genuine self-trust.
In the spring of 2020, Chappell released her first new single in years, “Pink Pony Club,” heralding the beginning of her new, glittery, pop-princess era, which was more of a rebirth than a rebrand. However, Saturn was not done having their say, because the pandemic was fresh on the scene and a shimmering club banger was not what the masses needed. Just a month later, Chappell was dropped from her label and forced to take on her music career as a fully independent artist, which also meant making a literal homecoming to her birthplace of Willard, Missouri, where she juggled several odd jobs while chipping away at her biggest project yet: her debut album.
2020-2021: Saturnian Trials & Errors
It’s fitting that Chappell’s next single, “California,” which is rife with 4th house themes, came out when Chappell had actually returned to her hometown. The lyrics in this song perfectly reflect the astrology of the time, as well: Saturn had finally ingressed to Aquarius (Chappell’s 5th house), which reflected her re-emergence into the music scene after her period of self-exile, but at the time of the song’s release, Saturn was retrograde and on the precipice of returning to Capricorn. To me, this is deeply symbolic of the yearning to return to a familiar place, especially when things become difficult, which they certainly had become. On top of losing her label’s support, Chappell was also dumped by a long-time partner during this period. I would imagine that at this time, it was pretty difficult for Chappell to feel like she was making any forward progress in her dreams.
Come get me out of California
No leaves are brown
I miss the seasons in Missouri
My dying town
Thought I'd be cool in California
I'd make you proud
To think I almost had it going
But I let you down
It was also during this literal homecoming that Chappell received a bipolar diagnosis, which shed a lot of light on her struggles throughout her teenage years and provided her with a path forward to treat her symptoms. Another theme of the 12th house is mental illness and the subconscious mind, and since Saturn rejoices in the 12th house, we can call this a malefic win, of sorts.
According to her Wikipedia page, Chappell did not formally release any singles in the entirety of 2021. While this may seem like an omen of doom for her career, from an astrological perspective it makes a lot of sense. The tender and fertile ground of her 4th and 5th houses was being tilled and fertilized and properly watered as Jupiter and Saturn both made their ways through Aquarius. Remember, Saturn rules Chappell’s 4th house and Jupiter rules her sun, so her core identity and the needs associated with that identity were undergoing intense excavations. The thing about 4th house stuff—internal revolutions and the like—is that during the most intense periods of transformation, it often seems to everyone else like nothing at all is happening. However, once you emerge on the other side and bring yourself back out into the world, the changes are extremely apparent. And, as the world was about to see in the following years, Chappell had undergone some pretty magical internal revolutions, and she was ready to let her freak flag fly.
2022-Present: The Homecoming of a Midwest Princess
In contrast to the quietness of Chappell’s 2021, she released a total of four new singles throughout 2022, which revealed a more pop-infused sound, as well as Chappell’s penchant for “tender, nostalgic” lyricism and musical style. In fact, the past seems to be a cornerstone of Chappell’s modern sound: she has stated that she takes inspiration directly from Madonna, Lady Gaga, Lana del Rey, Cyndi Lauper, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Stevie Nicks, and Lorde, just to name a few.
The other notable 4th house occurrence for Chappell in 2022 was moving back to LA to begin working on her album in earnest, after spending her time back in Missouri depressed, working at a drive through while writing snippets of songs in her notes app. “It felt like I needed to get out of Missouri to finish the rest of the songs that needed to be written,” she says of the decision to move back to Los Angeles. By March of 2022, Chappell signed a publishing deal and was able to begin working on her album with her favorite cowriter and producer, Dan Nigro.
“Naked in Manhattan,” Chappell’s first single of 2022, was released on the day of an exact Venus-Mars conjunction in Capricorn, a mere week before another Venus return for Chappell. This is a fitting transit to mark the next chapter in her homecoming story: first, the Mars-Saturn conjunction in her 4th, then the Venus-Saturn conjunction, and now Venus-Mars. However, this time, the transits seem to represent a more wholly integrated Chappell, having begun to bring her truest self-expression (Venus ruling her 1st house) to the world (Mars ruling her 7th house).
Throughout the rest of 2022, Chappell was busy, releasing three more singles while opening for Olivia Rodrigo and Fletcher on their respective tours. As Saturn continued marching through her 5th house, Chappell was on a roll, as she also released full music videos for each of her singles. It was clear that her underground years had begun to produce fruit, and as she embraced more of her most authentic, queer, glittery, girly expression, Chappell herself was truly breaking through the soil.
On top of seeking to create a space where queerness and silliness and joy reign supreme with her live performances, Chappell goes to great lengths in every aspect of her work to honor and take inspiration from her roots and her own personal past. As a matter of fact, in the trailer for her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, she says in a voiceover, “Where I grew up, here, is in me no matter what. However I wanna portray myself as Chappell, I will forever be from Willard, Missouri.”
In the mini-documentary that follows, the first episode (aptly titled “Homecoming”) opens with Chappell wading in a creek, catching frogs and reflecting aloud on the peace and tranquility of her hometown in comparison to Los Angeles. The next scene is Chappell digging through a storage unit and unearthing relics of her past, such as childhood baptism photos and a pink electric guitar. The 4th house is all over Chappell’s narration in this documentary: she discusses how she felt that her first album had to honor the place she was from, “no matter how I feel about it. It’s always gonna be a part of me.”
When it comes to the 4th house and our most foundational influences in life, I always conjure up the imagery of a rubber band. If you put a thumbtack on a surface and place the rubber band around it, then everything the rubber band can do and become is immediately about the location of that thumbtack.
The rubber band can stretch itself to its limits in an attempt to get away from the thumbtack, but it will snap back in an instant if that force is relinquished. The rubber band can adapt to being stretched to its capacity, over time, and sometimes this is necessary. Sometimes that type of pressure is what’s required. But the thumbtack is what roots the rubber band and provides it with a central point of origin.
This isn’t to say that we are all doomed to become exactly like our parents or live in our hometowns forever or repeat the mistakes of our former selves or anything like that. This is to further illustrate the 4th house as the ultimate point of reference for each individual life. Chappell recognized that she needed to leave her hometown in order to stretch her capacity and discover new versions of herself, but the stark contrast between her colorful, queer identity and her rural Christian roots is precisely what makes her journey and her vision so fascinating. I’m sure to many folks, she represents the outcome of being that rubber band and getting stretched to the point of snapping back and giving up, understanding why many people do end up remaining where they’re from, and honoring their unlived lives vicariously through her.
In fact, Chappell wanted to honor her roots so much that she ended up naming her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which wouldn’t be released until September 2023, six years to the day after School Nights was released.
What’s truly beautiful about Chappell’s transits for this album release is the relative emptiness of her 4th house; the only planet occupying Capricorn at the time was Pluto. This is another serendipitous parallel to the release date for School Nights, because Pluto was also the only planet in Capricorn that day. And where was Saturn, ruler of the 4th house and harbinger of each of Chappell’s personal and artistic revolutions? Over in Pisces, conjunct her sun. Venus, the ruler of Chappell’s entire chart, is perched in Leo, her 11th house, doubling down on the solar themes for this album. Not only do we see a Chappell Roan who knows herself, she also seems to trust deeply in herself—and in her ability to make damn good art.
The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess isn’t entirely autobiographical and it’s not entirely fiction, either; it’s a stylized journey through Chappell’s self-discovery and initiation into her own queerness. Outside of the 4th house themes we’ve already covered, like honoring her roots and hometown, Chappell also has a lot of lyrics that reference specific places, like Manhattan or Tennessee or California or a fictional nightclub that may or may not be based on The Abbey. She also evokes a sense of nostalgia on many different levels, whether it’s reminiscing on Mean Girls and a specific type of teenage freedom or through stylistic choices in her music that transport you to another time.
Nostalgia is all about a yearning for the past—whether that yearning is healthy or not. In the case of Chappell’s music from 2022 to now, you can’t help but feel that twinge when you listen. Whether it’s the synth-y, club-ready beats on “Naked in Manhattan,” or a Mazzy Star-inspired ballad like “Casual,” or a straight-up EDM banger that sounds like it came right out of 1991, such as “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl,” it’s sometimes hard to remember what decade you’re in as you experience Chappell’s music. And that’s intentional.
All of Chappell Roan’s music this far seems to be an homage to her younger self as much as it is an homage to her pop idols. “I feel like I’m honoring the five-year-old version of myself who wanted to dress up like that,” says Chappell of her over-the-top, drag-inspired aesthetic on stage and in her music videos. She’s also spoken about her experiences with inner child therapy and how much it has helped her to connect to her artistry in a more innocent and silly way. Chappell asks the question, “What did little me want?” and then creates from the answers she receives. To me, that is one of the most potent questions you can ask when you’re doing inner child work—which, coincidentally, overlaps a lot with 4th house work and internal family systems.
Chappell Roan is one of my favorite examples in recent history of what it looks like to truly move through a 4th house season and embrace solitude as a means of coming home to yourself. With her chart ruler in her 4th house, I reckon that Chappell will continue to create music that is simultaneously modern and nostalgic. I also would guess that as she approaches her Saturn return in her 7th house, she may begin writing more explicitly about her experiences with dating and relationships as a full-fledged queer adult woman.
Everything she creates seems to come from within a vibrant and detailed and exciting inner world—but of course, nobody else but Chappell will ever know exactly what that inner world looks, sounds, and feels like. The luxury of interacting with a 4th houser’s art, in my opinion, is the small glimpses it allows you into their inner realm. They’re always pulling from the past as they’re consciously creating the future. And we are all so lucky to experience Chappell Roan.
Thank you for reading. My 4th house guidebook, Homecoming, is available here.
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This is so good wtf 😭