Plus Size Singer and Model Katie Roeder of Season 4 Is Doing It All on Her Own Terms
She Sang, She Modeled, She Showed Up… Meet Katie Roeder of SZN4
If your mom has ever told you to watch something and been completely right about it, you already understand how I ended up down this rabbit hole. My mom told me I had to check out this girl on Netflix’s Building the Band, and I am so glad I listened. Because plus size singer and model Katie Roeder , Boston born, full of soul, ridiculously talented, is exactly the kind of woman this space was built to celebrate.
Roeder is one quarter of SZN4, the group formed on the Nicole Scherzinger-produced Netflix series Building the Band, and she just wrapped the twelfth stop of her first-ever tour when we sat down together in Atlanta.
Twelve cities in and having the time of her life and honestly, after spending time with her, that tracks completely. Plus size singer and model Katie Roeder has the kind of presence that makes you feel like you have known her for years within about four minutes.
A Boston Girl Who Never Needed Permission
There is something about growing up in a city that takes no mess that follows you everywhere. Katie grew up in Malden and went to school in Everett, both just outside Boston, in a community with a rich Latino presence that let her stay connected to her Hispanic roots even when most of her Hispanic family lived elsewhere.
“Boston is a very sports city,” she told me, laughing. “My brother loves all things sports, so I was always watching all the games and going to all the parades when all the sports teams would win. And like, that was so much fun to just be in a city that has so much pride for the city itself.”
But more than the sports pride, Boston gave her something else: the confidence to simply not care what people think. “Everyone says that people in Boston are massholes,” she said. “And I feel like that’s mostly just people not caring at all. And I think that definitely carried over. I’m just going to do whatever I want. It is what it is.”
That is an energy, and Katie Roeder has carried it onto every stage she has stepped on.
Musical Theater Kid Turned Neo-Soul Artist
If you thought Katie came to singing in some complicated, winding way, think again. Her parents used to take her to local community theater, and her mom even went when she was pregnant with her. By the time she was old enough to watch a kids’ production and see the girls on stage, her mind was already made up.
“I saw the girls who were in it afterwards, and I was like, I want to be like that when I grow up,” she shared. “And my parents were like, great, let me put you into musical theater.”
She ran with it. But musical theater was only the beginning. Her sound started pulling her somewhere else toward pop, R&B, neo-soul, and soul-forward music. And Adele, of all people, is who lit that fire.
“I think Adele was, what really made me want to sing for real and not just do musical theater,” Katie said. “I was just addicted to seeing Adele every time.”
And then there is her grandmother. Her paternal grandmother, who passed away when Katie was in second grade, left her with what might be the most meaningful creative inheritance imaginable. “She told my dad, literally, like, some of the last words she ever said were make sure Katie keeps singing and that she never stops.”
She wears a ring from that same grandmother every single day. When you understand that, you understand why Katie Roeder does not take a single performance for granted.
