It’s become one of the biggest songs of 2024, but according to co-writer and producer Dan Nigro, Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe! didn’t have the smoothest of births.
Nigro has told Variety that the song’s origins can be traced back to November 2022, when he, Kayleigh Rose Amstutz (AKA Chappell Roan) and Justin Tranter came up with a “scratch idea” comprising just a verse and a chorus.
Originally called Good Luck, Jane, due to Amstutz’ insistence that it should have a person’s name in it, Nigro says, “It's a song we wrestled with for a while. We laid down a demo, and the two of us felt like it wasn't right. We knew something was special about the song, but we couldn't tell what it was that we were getting wrong. So, we worked on it for a day, we put it away, and then a few months later, she came in for something else, and she was like, ‘What about that one song we wrote? I feel like there's something there.’”
Nigro says that this is typical of his working relationship with Amstutz: “Kayleigh and I are not the people who go in the studio and write a song in one day.”
In the case of Good Luck, Babe!, Nigro says, "We knew that something about it was really special, but we could not figure it out. Was it the key? Was it the verses that needed to feel more spunky?"
No, it turns out - the problem was the chorus.
“When we opened it back up, we really narrowed in on the chorus and decided that some of the words needed to be in full voice,” says Nigro. “And then all of a sudden, we listened back and went, ‘OK! I think we've figured it out!’ Once we finally got it, it was such a relief. That song was so intense, and it was definitely one of the hardest songs to get right.”
Beyond this, Nigro says that the writing process 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 on her own in like two minutes.”
The production, though, was a different story. “I tend to keep my productions pretty minimal for the most part. But Good Luck, Babe! is such an epic production - there are like 100 string parts! When I'm adding that much production, I tend to feel like I'm doing too many things,” says Nigro.
Nigro admits that, during the making of the song, he never got the sense that it was going to be a big hit. Of Chappell Roan, though, he says that “three or four days into meeting her, I was convinced she was a superstar,” and that once Good Luck, Babe! had been released as a single in April, it quickly became apparent that people were loving it.
Nigro has also had hits with Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray and Caroline Polacheck, but is reluctant to compare his projects with them to his Chappell Roan collaborations. “I think the important thing is that she's incredibly articulate about what she wants out of a song, and we have a great relationship when it comes to creating music,” he says.
