While Chappell Roan seems to think that she’s the only one who has ever suffered the ills and rigors of what it means to be famous, back in 2004, there was another “singer” who was getting endlessly fed up with being stalked by people—whether paparazzi, fans or generally curious oglers—that wouldn’t leave her alone because she had become a recognizable face in the culture. That “singer” was none other than Lindsay Lohan, who had made her name with a series of Disney movies before trying to branch out into music, Hilary Duff-style, in 2004 with her debut, Speak.
The lead single, “Rumors,” was the album’s lead for a reason: there was little else on it that was as strong (though, of course, “Symptoms of You,” “Over” and “Disconnected” deserve honorable mention for passable tracks). Indeed, Lohan seemed to give her all to “Rumors” in terms of lending the “personal experience” required to make the angst and vexaation come across, offering up her co-songwriting skills to it, along with four other songs on the album (namely, “Symptoms of You,” “Speak,” “Over” and “Anything But Me”).
Written at a time when paparazzi harassment had become a new breed of hostile and omnipresent, one wonders how Chappell Roan might have coped in this era considering she can barely deal with the present, improved as it is on that front. And in no small part thanks to the hell someone like Britney Spears endured during the height of her fame, inspiring laws that demanded stricter regulations for paparazzi and their invasive practices. To a lesser degree, Lohan was also stalked with a fervor that pertained more to building on her image as a “party girl” who was sure to get caught in a drunken pose sooner or later (though probably sooner).
As this behavior amplified on Lohan’s part post-Mean Girls, the paparazzi developed a kind of bloodlust for “catching her in the act” of going out to clubs and engaging in the kind of “antics” that any famous youth living in Los Angeles pre-social media would be prone to. And Lohan was never one for resisting temptation. Her main question in “Rumors” is, essentially, why should she? Or, as she more politely phrases it, “I just need a little space to breathe/Can you please respect my privacy?”
The same sentiment was on Roan’s mind yet again as she stepped out on the streets of Paris during Fashion Week to go to dinner. By this time no stranger to directly confronting anyone she feels is violating her boundaries, Roan was quick to whip out her phone and film not only the paparazzi, but a lone fan standing nearby waiting for her to sign something.
She was not endeared, videoing herself as she explained, “So I’m just trying to go to dinner and I’ve asked these people several times to get away from me.” She then went right up to the fan and called him out by saying, “This person I’ve asked several times to go away and they will not. They’re hiding their face because they’re ashamed.” And in that moment, said fan (who might not be one after this) removes what they were holding to cover their face and says, “Hiii” right to the camera.
Roan then goes on, “These are all the people that are completely disregarding all of my boundaries. Um, so this is…so I want all of you, I’m asking you kindly to please leave me alone and stop following me, harassing me… So this is what it’s like, if you’re wondering how it is.”
In effect, Roan just adapted her own lyrics for “Rumors.” And she’s been talking about her contempt for being followed, stalked and prodded at in the public space from the get-go, stating back in 2024, “When I’m on stage, when I’m performing, when I’m in drag, when I’m at a work event, when I’m doing press…I am at work. Any other circumstance, I am not in work mode. I am clocked out. I don’t agree with the notion that I owe a mutual exchange of energy, time, or attention to people I do not know, do not trust, or who creep me out—just because they’re expressing admiration.”
This is the type of thing that no woman in the spotlight would have bothered or even thought to say back in the “Rumors” era. Let alone believe that anyone would even pause long enough from behind their cameras to listen. Roan’s ability to push back like this is, thus, a sign of some kind of progress—even though it ultimately seems like a futile attempt to quell the nature of parasocial relationships that are part and parcel of being famous. In this regard, celebrities often come across as wanting to have their cake and eat it too. With Roan being the most shining example of that in recent years.
For Lohan, wanting the trappings of fame with the benefit of privacy in a decade that was just learning so many new ways to be grotesque and violating (particularly toward famous women) was a pinnacle of that idiom. Even so, she went all the way with “Rumors” and its accompanying video, which features her in various “caged” type scenarios (at one point, even literally, as she swings inside a cage in the club—this done long before Taylor Swift in the video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” or even Britney Spears inside her own cage setup during the “Piece of Me” performance for The Circus Starring Britney Spears).
And from the start, she centers the concept on what it feels like to be hunted by photographers waiting to document your every move, no matter how unflattering. Tricking the paparazzi with a classic decoy maneuver at the beginning, Lohan manages to get to the club undetected (but not for long), bringing along with her a digital camera that was emblematic of the time. She then starts taking pictures of other people, almost like a flex meant to say, “See? How does it feel?” Something that echoes Roan turning the camera on everyone else as she filmed the “harassment” she was enduring while off the clock.
In this regard, Lohan’s lyrics, “I just wanna be me/I don’t understand, why would you wanna bring me down?/When I’m only having fun/I’m gonna live my life (but not the way you want me to),” strongly mirror the Roan vibe. Along with other such declarations as, “I’m sick of being followed” and “Why can’t they back up off me?/Why can’t they let me live?” The answer lies somewhere between the churning and burning wheels of the celebrity-industrial complex and the conditioning that modern humans have been given to view celebrities as the new “gods.”
Either way, perhaps redheads think alike, with both Lohan and Roan expressing a disdain for paparazzi and generally creepy behavior in well-documented ways that most other “pop stars” aren’t comfortable doing. Not wanting to somehow end up stoking the flames all the more by trying to put them out through “unnatural” means. In any case, it feels as if “Rumors” is ripe for being covered by Roan on her next album.
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