Dan Nigro on “Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan: The story behind the song

Shervin Lainez

After spending months writing a new song with Chappell Roan in 2023, Dan Nigro hit a wall. The Grammy-winning songwriter and producer had tried pretty much everything he could think of with the simmering pop phenomenon – boosting the production, cleaning up the lyrics, adjusting the key – and yet the song still didn’t have that special X-factor they were looking for.

“We became more and more frustrated,” says Nigro Billboard“We knew there was something really special about it, but we couldn’t figure it out. Was it the key? Was it the verses that needed more oomph?”

But when the duo found what they were looking for in the stratospheric chorus, the song morphed into Roan’s surprise hit “Good Luck, Babe!” Since the song’s release in April, Roan (born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz) has become one of the most talked-about voices in mainstream pop music. The single marked her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100, debuting at No. 77 and rising to No. 16 on the June 29 chart, with three of her other songs – “Red Wine Supernova,” “Hot to Go!” and “Pink Pony Club” – populating the bottom half of the list. Her debut album, “The 40 Years of Love,” has since been released. The rise and fall of a Midwestern princessreached a career high of number 8 on the Billboard 200.

It should come as no surprise that a song co-written by Nigro would find such success. In recent years, the songwriter has established himself as one of the industry’s most sought-after writers, penning hits for pop artists such as Olivia Rodrigo, Caroline Polachek, Conan Gray and others. But in working with Roan, Nigro has found something truly special, he says.

“When we did (her May 2020 single) ‘California,’ the second song we wrote together, I felt like I was part of something really special,” Nigro says. “It felt magical and deeply relatable… and really important (because) she made it feel important.”

Nigro describes the “intense” process of writing “Good Luck, Babe!”, the song’s overwhelming success over the past two months, and why he knew early on that Chappell Roan was destined to become “a superstar.”

Tell me about the beginning of the process with “Good Luck, Babe!” – where did the original idea for the track come from and when did you start working on it?

Kayleigh, Justin (Tranter) and I actually came up with the idea in November 2022. We wrote a rough idea – it was just a verse and a chorus. The idea was originally called “Good Luck, Jane” – Kayleigh really wanted that to be a name.

It’s a song we’ve been wrestling with for a while. We recorded a demo and we both felt like it wasn’t right. We knew there was something special about the song, but we couldn’t put our finger on what we’d done wrong. So we worked on it for a day, put it away, and then a few months later she came over with something else and was like, “What about that one song we wrote? I feel like there’s something to it.”

Kayleigh’s voice is crazy in all of her songs, but on “Good Luck, Babe!” she seems to be at her best, using almost her entire vocal range in a single song.

Absolutely. When we opened it back up, we really focused on the chorus and decided that some of the words needed to be full voice. And then all of a sudden we listened to it again and thought, “Okay! I think we’ve got it!” When we finally did it, it was a huge relief. The song was so intense and definitely one of the hardest songs to nail.

Kayleigh and I aren’t the kind of people who go into the studio and write a song in a day. We take our time, go through the lyrics, then forget them for a month, and then listen to them with fresh ears. Often when you’re working on a song, you’ll be really excited halfway through, but then look back and think, “Oh, that wasn’t as good as we thought it was.” Thankfully, Kayleigh has that insight and knows when to step back and reflect. She has incredible confidence. She’s also an incredible singer – which is great, but because she often sounds really good on each song, it can be difficult to tell the difference between really good and amazing.

I know Kayleigh said that writing this song was “a shit job” and that fits very well with what you’re describing here..

Sure. But it’s funny: For me it wasn’t actually that bad, write. I think the production and the process was really hard. The writing of the song was actually pretty fluid. I remember she came over one day and I was like, “Well, now we need a bridge.” She wrote the bridge all by herself in about two minutes. She said, “Put the chords in before the chorus,” I had her looping and she just got on the mic and started singing. I tried to keep looping the chords because she just kept singing and I was like, “No, we have to keep going!” It was amazing.

You mentioned that the original version of the song you wrote with Justin had very different verses lyrically – what do you think fundamentally changed between the first draft and the final version?

I don’t remember exactly what the verses were originally because it’s been so long since we wrote them. But I do remember we wanted the words to sound more effortless. We wanted to make sure they had that casual, cool, relaxed feel. The lyrics were a little more pointed, a little more cutting. We made it more relaxed, and then at one point she was sitting on the couch and she said, “I just want to have a line in there about my arms sticking out of a sunroof.” It was so funny.

At what point in this process – if at all – did you think “Good Luck, Babe!” would be a hit?

When it’s hard to get a song right, especially from a production standpoint, I become so aware of it that I can never quite see it clearly. Also, “Good Luck, Babe!” is so dramatic – I tend to keep my productions pretty minimalist for the most part. But “Good Luck, Babe!” is such an epic production – there are like 100 string parts! When I add that much production, I feel like I’m doing too many things. So I don’t think there was a point in this process where I thought, “Oh, this is going to be a hit.”

I remember she texted me the day the song came out and was just excited about the song. Then her manager texted me and said, “This one feels special, this one feels different right now.” That’s the crazy thing to me about being able to see the numbers in real time: You have absolutely no way of knowing, and then within 12 hours people can tell you, “Oh yeah, the audience is really liking this one.”

It seems clear that “Good Luck, Babe!” really cemented this cultural moment for Kayleigh: The song climbed into the top 20 of the Hot 100, “Red Wine Supernova,” “Hot to Go!” and “Pink Pony Club” all made it into the Hot 100, and The rise and fall of a Midwestern princess continues to climb the Billboard 200 and reaches the top 10.

It’s crazy to see this. It feels like… I don’t want to say “fate,” that’s the wrong word. Everything happened for a reason. This song was written during the filming of rise and falland to me it felt like it could have easily been on the record. I’d like to think that because it came out at a different time, it had a different meaning and was a different vessel for the album. Whereas if it had come out with the album, the record wouldn’t be what it is now.

Why do you think this moment is happening now and not with the release of the album last September?

All I can say is that three or four days after I first met her, I was convinced she was a superstar. I was so taken by the way she thought about music, and I couldn’t believe I was a part of it, because it felt magical and also deeply relatable. When we made ‘Pink Pony Club,’ that was the record where it felt like we were making something really powerful. It was that kind of feeling where you feel like you’re making a song that people need. I always had a feeling that something like that would happen to her; the only question was when it would happen.

The fact that she’s so phenomenal live means that people can finally see in real time how good she is. Word gets around and it’s wonderful to see her successful in such an old-fashioned way. I’ve said to so many people, “That’s how it used to be – you had to see the artists live and see that they’re good at what they do and then spread the word.” She’s so good at what she does that the system works again! It really is that simple.

This is an important point – although a lot has happened in the last two months, this was not an overnight success. Chappell had been growing steadily before “Good Luck, Babe!” took off.

I completely agree, it’s not an overnight success – even since the record came out nine months ago, the numbers have been increasing every day by about a percentage a week. It just took us so long to get to the point where enough people were talking about it every day that it started growing exponentially.

You’ve had great success working with pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray and Caroline Polacheck. Does working with Chappell feel different than with your other collaborators? Or what things feel similar about working with all of these artists?

Honestly, I always feel weird when I’m asked to compare people. I think the main thing is that she’s incredibly good at articulating what she wants from a song, and we have a great relationship when it comes to composing music. We write songs together, but we also produce them together, and she’s in the room for a lot of it. There’s a really good language between us when it comes to composing music. I can understand what she’s looking for, and if I’m not getting something right when producing, she can step in. She’s so good at explaining exactly what she wants, and it makes for a really good flow in our working relationship.

A version of this story originally appeared in the June 22, 2024 issue of billboard.