Chappell Roan- 'Cowboy' Unreleased Song Reaction

Cowboy Lore: The track popped up on TikTok most of a year ago in the way that most Chappell tracks do, from a blind account with no history that promptly vanished. The fan community is split on if it is Chappell leaking stuff as she used to do openly on her Instagram live feeds for feedback. She seems to seek some level of approval with her untested work for confidence purposes, or perhaps the sheer glee of an Artist just sharing what they have made. It's all unknown. But the clip popped out. It got picked up and spread to X and YouTube very quickly, then got copyright pummeled about a week later and erased everyplace much like "Ruin Your Night" would be a a few months later. It was the first Chappell demo that ever was copyright struck so hard and fast. Fan speculation is that her label Island did it, as the track was not protected under ASCAP yet, and possibly on track for CR2. Chappells desire to share and the legal aspects of releasing music without any protections have long been at odds. So this is as good a guess as we can make. The track has the same production sound as Ruin Your Night does, and it's suspected they are sister songs from the same writing period. Both are about equally finished, missing a full verse and often bridge. They both sound like Chappell's home production on her own equipment., much as Read & Make Out is, only that song from a much earlier writing batch. I personally think Cowboy was dropped into demo limbo because it's a story song, and there is no last verse that concludes the story in it yet, and perhaps Chappell has not figured out what that verse should be. So it sits on the shelf waiting for her to be inspired. It's an interesting piece, about a young woman in an abusive relationship that perhaps looked to Chappell for an escape path ("Right Person at the wrong time") and what became of Penny is yet untold to us. It is very very Chappell in design and execution, and I personally feel that the Chorus is one of the most infectious she has written. It's something that I would like to hear on CR2 a good deal, but Cowboys fate is currently unknown, and will like its end, be written by Chappell eventually. In the grander scheme Chappell is still working on CR2, and has stated that she has not made much progress on her last shots. She continues to reinforce the narrative that her music comes to her slowly, and takes time, and she will not force herself to write when she doesn't feel it. The fan base has pretty much accepted this outlook from her, and seems patient in waiting for new things. I think she is going to feel a NEED to drop a single in the next three months or so to maintain momentum in the industry overall. I still think Read & Make Out will be that single. But that is just a guess on my part, and she could do just about anything. We'll see. She just concluded her 6 show tour of Australia and New Zealand a week and change back, and has returned to the US to celebrate her 28th birthday yesterday with friends. In three weeks she will have a 3 show tour in South America for the SA Lalapaloza. Argentina, Chili and Brazil are the three stops and audiences are expected to be in the 6 figure ranges for all of them, especially the stop in Brazil which is Rio. She might pull a new song out for these, or she might not. We'll see. No further shows have been announced for the rest of '26, but it's expected she'll do some US dates at some point, and there has been some talk of a Asian tour through Japan, Korea, and other nations in the area. Her fans in the PRC continue to strongly try to get her to come to see them, but anything involving Mainland China is difficult to arrange and probably will not happen. And that's all the news we have right now. Here is a self from her recent shoot for a MAC makeup piece. It made the appropriate waves in her fan communities. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HBhpz26WsAAjebv?format=jpg&name=medium