How Daniel Nigro’s Belief in Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan Led to the ‘Year of Vindication’

Steven J. Horowitz

5 December 2024 at 4:00 pm·3-min read

Daniel Nigro knew there was something special about Chappell Roan, a young upstart who had just moved to Los Angeles from Missouri, during their first meeting in 2018. The pair cooked up a few songs after that — notably “Pink Pony Club,” about a queer woman who finds community at a West Hollywood gay bar — but it would take a long time for the tune to resonate. It finally entered the charts this past June, nearly four years after its initial release.

For Nigro, it’s all a matter of staying true to his belief in an artist. “Of course, it’s the year of vindication,” he says about Roan’s success. “I feel like there’s so many times where I was shouting from the rooftops about how amazing Chappell was or how good her songs were.”

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Nigro, who has been named Variety Hitmakers Producer of the Year, has spent the past five years building out the sound of pop’s biggest breakthroughs, first with Olivia Rodrigo’s debut, “Sour,” in 2021 and its tearjerker lead single, “Drivers License,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and stayed there for eight weeks). Then came Roan, who built a framework for her rocket ride to superstardom as an opener on Rodrigo’s “Sour” tour in 2022, followed by a massive word-of-mouth groundswell that culminated in six songs from her debut, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” charting. Her seventh song to do so, “Good Luck, Babe!,” is now nominated in top categories at the 2025 Grammy Awards, and Roan is up for best new artist, an award Rodrigo won in 2022.

Nigro, 42, has been the creative fulcrum for Rodrigo and Roan since early in both their careers, fulfilling his goal of partnering with artists who have a specific vision. A Long Island native, he left for Los Angeles after his emo band, As Tall as Lions, disbanded in 2010, and started writing commercial jingles to pay the rent. He also co-wrote songs for Kimbra and Sky Ferreira. But it was his 2017 collaboration with English singer-songwriter Freya Ridings that gave him faith in his instincts: After the label rejected five versions of their song “Castles,” it went on to amass nearly 250 million plays on Spotify.

“I was learning my footing on how to navigate situations where I felt a song was good and would fight for it, rather than just listening to somebody else say, ‘Oh, we don’t really like it,’” he says. “I feel like that was the turning point for me.”

After meeting Roan, who was then signed to Atlantic Records, he furthered that ethos. They played “Pink Pony Club” for the execs at Atlantic, who weren’t impressed and dropped Roan soon after. But Nigro had so much faith in her that he created Amusement Records to put out “Midwest Princess,” which went on to reach No. 2 on the Billboard 200.

Needless to say, that faith — not to mention that success — has drastically increased demand for Nigro, whose recognition as a musical force culminated in a Grammy nomination for producer of the year (non-classical). “When you believe, you believe.”

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