The rise and rise of Chappell Roan

Roan’s online critics have, she says, been complaining that the singer hasn’t explained the prop, which forms part of the fairytale gothic set for her latest tour, Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things.

Like its wordy name suggests, the stage set for Roan’s summer romp around European festivals, from Barcelona to Warsaw, is extravagantly over the top, all sinisterly curlicued castle architecture, green smoke and pyro.

Roan’s costumes tonight riff upon the idea of a sexy court jester, a riot of harlequin patterns paired with yellow, orange and pink makeup, and eyelashes like flower stamens. She has previously worn bustled gowns, moth-inspired fairy chic and weird trompe l’oeil dresses, her long red hair the only constant in an ever-refreshing look book of lysergically operatic couture. Roan’s band – all women – are in velvet pantaloons, given to disco-rock one moment, glam guitar chugs the next, with bursts of horror-movie church organ in between songs.

There is already quite a lot to take in, then, at this agricultural showground unglamorously situated near Edinburgh airport, and that’s before Roan reveals what she’s named the cuddly grotesque. “I’m sorry I haven’t been addressing Shigella – that’s this girl,” she says. “She’s 10 million years old, and an ancient bacteria.”

Already an uncommon pop star, Roan only seems to be becoming more unconventional as her 2023 album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, gains yet greater traction. Hers is a helium-on-steroids rise that has seen her go from niche, queer-pop cause célèbre to ubiquitous over the past two years. Nominated for five Grammys this year, she won the best new artist award and used her platform at the ceremony to ask the music industry to do more to support developing artists.

Since then, Roan has released two singles: The Giver, a nudge-wink country song about how she can seduce a woman better than any man, and The Subway, a tortured love song about not getting over a relationship. The Subway debuted at No 1 in the UK charts at the start of August; its eye-popping video – featuring Roan chasing an ex made of green hair around the New York public transport system – showcases her quirky, fantastical eye.

Technically, The Subway is not new – Roan and her band have been playing it live for a year. When I watched her perform it in a small theatre in Dublin just over a year ago, Roan’s charisma was already arena-sized, packed into a sweaty shoebox. Now, though she’s playing pretty much the same setlist, her operation has budgets and designers and dragons – she has sold 60,000 tickets across two nights in the Scottish capital. This evening’s show is the US singer’s biggest headline gig so far, she says. At one point the traditional Scottish chant of “Here we, here we, here we fucking go” breaks out, except it’s “Chappell, Chappell, Chappell fucking Roan!”

There are, sadly, no further signs of a new album – just Roan’s cover of Barracuda, a 1977 song by the female-led US rock band Heart. In a recent interview, she emphasised that “the second project doesn’t exist yet. There is no album. There is no collection of songs. It took me five years to write the first one, and it’s probably going to take at least five to write the next.” She clarified: “I’m not that type of writer that can pump it out.”

The thousands gathered here tonight must make do with Roan’s existing takes on crap dates, unrequited passion and unbridled sexual energy. During Hot to Go!, the crowd dance along to the song’s accompanying choreography (spelling out the letters H-O-T- T-O-G-O with their arms) as vape contrails intermingle with the smell of fried takeaway.

Pop endlessly recycles the passion and pain of love. What’s more rare, however, is a writer who can come up with a novel spin on these themes that also feel timeless. Roan has plenty of hot, hyper-modern takes, such as Femininomenon, a high-kicking workout about female savoir faire, or Casual, a very 21st-century howl of outrage at a partner who won’t commit. Best of all, perhaps, is how she turns revelling in the downfall of exes into a gleeful sexual fetish on My Kink Is Karma, one of the funniest instances of musical schadenfreude in recent times. These frank, on-the-nose tunes have not outstayed their welcome.

Roan has more to say too. Some observers have griped that, for a star who seemed so outspoken in 2024, she has been rather muted of late. But in an emotional speech she thanks fans for allowing her to be “free” onstage. “I know right now it’s really fucking scary for gay people,” she says, “and I’m so sorry. But this is what pride feels like and what joy feels like, and this is what we have to hang on to […] our smiles and our joy.”

Can pleasure be a political act? The jury is still out. But the endorphins that come with Roan’s high-medieval camp club pop certainly feel like an antidote to poison.

Photograph by Hope Holmes