This mash-up of The Hives and Chappell Roan is oddly brilliant
Hot To Go, I Told You So, anyone?
By Nick Reilly
The Hives have shared a video which sees their music being spliced with that of Chappell Roan and it’s a work of unlikely genius.
The Swedish indie icons have clearly realised that there’s an unlikely similarity between their signature hit ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’ and Roan’s ‘HOT TO GO!’, which has led to splice the two together with brilliant results.
The clip sees Chappell’s vocals being underpinned by the Swedish band’s thunderous and instantly recognisable guitar line to deliver a virtual collab that has us hoping they might just team up to deliver it IRL in the near future.
It’s got the backing of their fans too. “Collab of the century,” enthused one fan on X/Twitter. “Yeah this is rad,” said another.
It comes after a breakout year for Chappell Roan that saw her land on the cover of this very magazine and most recently perform at the Grammys on Sunday night where she also picked up the gong for Best New Artist.
Accepting the gong, shortly after her performance of ‘Pink Pony Club’, Roan called out unfair record label practices that directly affect artists.
“I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here before the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists. I got signed so young—I got signed as a minor,” she said.
“When I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt, and like most people, I had… quite a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and [could not] afford insurance. It was devastating to feel so committed to my art and feel so betrayed by the system and dehumanised. If my label had prioritised it, I could have been provided care for a company I was giving everything to. Record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a liveable wage and health insurance and protection.”
You can also read our 2023 interview with The Hives’ Pelle Almqvist here, where he looks back on his storied career.