Music correspondent
BBCWhen Chappell Roan toured the UK last autumn, she was playing small, club-level shows.
On Friday, she headlined the Reading Festival, taking no prisoners with a dazzling, jubilant set that capped her incredible rise to fame over the past 18 months.
Backed by a gothic fairytale castle and a powerful all-female band, she added a crunchy rock edge to hits like Hot To Go and Casual, bringing her debut album to stadium-sized life.
“Thank you for loving me and standing with me,” she told the 90,000-strong audience. “This is a dream come true, seriously.”
Roan was booked for Reading after emerging as the biggest break-out star of 2024, but her journey to success has been anything but smooth.
She spent years honing her style and fighting sceptical record labels before her campy, singalong anthems found their intended audience.
Her first (and so far only) album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess was a slow-burning hit that chronicled the singer’s search for identity: Leaving small-town Missouri for California, ditching the “hyper mega bummer boys” she’d dated in her teens and embracing queer love.
The songs were tightly written, embracing everything from country to 80s synth pop, but it was the lyrics – full of solitary yearning and thwarted romance – that really connected.
At Reading, devoted fans screamed every word, frequently threatening to drown out Roan’s own vocals, powerful though they were.
“You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the world’s biggest hen party,” said Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, surveying the multitude of pink cowboy hats in the audience.
Roan emerged on stage shortly after 7pm in an ornate crimson outfit, topped with black “bat wing” fascinator that fans immediately dubbed “Chappell Crow-an”.
Skipping across the stage, she opened with three of her most upbeat songs – Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl, Femininomenon and After Midnight – only pausing to shed layers of her elaborate costume.
Over the next 90 minutes, she played practically every song she’s released, including the early release Love Me Anyway and this year’s standalone tracks The Giver and Subway.
Normally, the reliance on album tracks and deep cuts would be a bad sign for a festival headliner – but Roan wasn’t stretching out thin material.
Somehow, nearly every song from Midwest Princess has become a modern anthem, elevating the album to the status of classics like Thriller, Rumours and Back To Black.
Highlights included Hot To Go, with its viral YMCA-style dance routine; and the snarky comeuppance anthem My Kink Is Karma, which Roan dedicated “to my ex who is in the crowd tonight”.
But it was ballads like Casual, Coffee and Picture You that really showcased the star’s voice – all country twang and breathy vocal flips, that puts her on a higher plane than her pop contemporaries.
The constrictions of the festival slot meant sadly there was no room for Roan’s trademark banter.
A highlight of her current tour has frequently come during The Giver – where she pauses the song to read out messages from audience members about their hopeless exes. (Last week in Oslo, she got fans to boo a man called Daniel, who had cheated on his partner “twice in the same Burger King parking lot”.)
Sadly, there was no repeat at Reading, but the singer’s charisma and stage presence were never in doubt.
As the sun set over Little John’s Farm, she strode to edge of the catwalk for her breakout single, Good Luck Babe, silhouetted by spotlights and looking every inch like a superstar.
She sealed the deal with Pink Pony Club, blowing kisses and high-kicking her way across the stage, as fireworks rained down on her and fans happily lost their minds.
From the first note to the final bow, it was a perfect pop set.
Roan will do it all over again in Leeds on Saturday night, before two headline shows at Edinburgh’s Royal Showground next week.
And then? With her summer festival run over, Roan has a handful of dates in Ireland and the USA before she faces the unenviable task of following up the femininomenal success of her debut.
Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe earlier this month, she said that task could take as long as five years.
“The second project doesn’t exist yet,” she said. “There is no album. There is no collection of songs.”
“I want to write music whenever I feel settled. I haven’t felt settled,” she continued. “It’s been a very unsettling year and a half, and I think once I really feel calm in a new house and have a routine… Then I can think about writing a song.”
Let’s hope she gets that rest soon – because we need her back as soon as possible.
Chappell Roan’s Reading Festival setlist
- Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl
- Femininomenon
- After Midnight
- Naked in Manhattan
- Guilty Pleasure
- Casual
- The Subway
- Hot To Go!
- Barracuda (Heart cover)
- Picture You
- Love Me Anyway
- The Giver
- Red Wine Supernova
- Coffee
- Good Luck, Babe!
- My Kink Is Karma
- Pink Pony Club
