Role Model has a plan, and it begins with a question. “Maybe we bring back heartland rock,” Tucker Pillsbury, the singer who records as Role Model, said on a new episode of the Rolling Stone Studio. He is already well on his way. After the breakout single “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out” got a generation of listeners hooked on Tom Petty-flavored songwriting, his third album, Chuck Timely & The Hourglass, out Aug. 7, goes for Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp, per Rolling Stone.
Chuck Timely & The HourglassRole ModelListen on Apple Music
Not a pop star
Pillsbury makes pop but doesn't want the job description. “I just don't want to be in that race, 'cause I'm not trying to be a pop star,” he said. “Being a pop star is not interesting to me. I don't want to do that. But I love pop music and I love making it.” The shiny outfits and backing dancers have always scared him, he said. He prefers to live a little way beneath all that.
The end of Sally
He also killed the “Sally” bit, the nightly guest-star routine that gave the song its viral life. Almost no one cared, he says, except some disappointed kids. “I just think if I didn't believe in this album, Chuck, then I probably would've kept doing the Sally bit,” he said. The album also carries a cameo: Dakota Johnson's voice is on the spoken bridge of “Love I You,” which Pillsbury initially resisted because he wanted to keep his personal life separate from his music. “It made the song really special to me,” he said.
What Pitchfork heard
Pitchfork is warmer on the songs than on the concept. It likes the writing growth, from the strip-club clichés of 2022 to the “thoughtful scene-setting” of “The Wedding,” and calls “Service Receipt” perfect. It says the record's two lead producers, guitarist Mason Stoops and keyboardist Taylor Mackall, who are longtime collaborators of Lizzy McAlpine, give it an antique honky-tonk feel. The complaint is the alter ego. Chuck Timely is the time-traveling session musician he invented to explain the album's mix of eras, and Pitchfork finds the device self-conscious: “Maybe next time, Role Model won't feel like he needs to play a role at all.”
The Live Lounge cover
He then went to BBC Radio 1 and covered Olivia Rodrigo's “Maggots for Brains” in the Live Lounge on Tuesday (Aug. 11). Before the video went up, he posted an Instagram Story warning fans. “I covered olivia for BBC and im just gonna get ahead of the comments and let you know i botched it,” he wrote, per Billboard. Commenters mostly disagreed.
Why it matters
Pitchfork places Pillsbury in the breakout class of 2025 alongside Alex Warren and Sombr, and says that the turn from lo-fi hip-hop and bedroom pop toward folk and country was validated by “Sally.” His next move is on-screen: Rolling Stone says he is making his film debut opposite Natalie Portman in Lena Dunham's Good Sex.
What's next: possibly a new name. “Yes, I'll probably change my name,” Pillsbury told Rolling Stone, though he also says he suspects it's too late.
- Album
- Chuck Timely & The Hourglass, out Aug. 7, 2026
- Producers
- Mason Stoops and Taylor Mackall
- Live Lounge
- BBC Radio 1, Aug. 11, 2026
- Film debut
- Good Sex, directed by Lena Dunham
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
