<\/p>\n
As Chappell Roan<\/a> once sang, in New York you can try things. So it was the perfect place for her to make her big American return. Saturday night in New York was Chappell\u2019s first U.S. show in nearly a year, after her summer of conquering European festivals. She\u2019s bringing it all back home with a limited series of pop-up <\/a>gigs in NYC, Kansas City, and L.A., with her new \u201cVisions of Damsels and Other Dangerous Things\u201d show.<\/p>\n Saturday night was a triumphant American homecoming for the Midwest princess, the kick-off for her four-night stand at New York\u2019s Forest Hills Stadium. It\u2019s a historic venue \u2014 and way too tiny for a star on her level. But that\u2019s why the show had such a special and intimate feel, under the stars, on the first chilly night of September. The whole night felt like a coronation moment for her \u2014 and a communal dance-crazed celebration for her hardcore fans.<\/p>\n Her brief pop-up run is basically a victory lap, after her meteoric rise<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s been quite a year, huh?\u201d Chappell told the crowd. \u201cThank you for sticking with me through it. It\u2019s been really hard. And I\u2019m so glad that I can come to work like this<\/em>,\u201d displaying her flamboyantly dressed self.<\/p>\n She spent the night exploding with queer bravado and supernova presence, on a giant stage designed as a giant gothic castle. The crowd\u2019s sing-along energy was ferocious from the start, with the opening one-two punch of \u201cSuper Graphic Ultra Modern Girl\u201d and \u201cFeminomenon,\u201d where Chappell asked \u201cBut does it happen?\u201d and got 13,000 NOOOOO<\/em>s back. Yet she can\u2019t help being the super-est, graphic-est, ultra-modern-est force in the house.<\/p>\n When it comes to her Visions of Damsels aesthetic, she goes totally medieval with her fantasy castle, complete with staircase, parapets, drawbridge, and throne. Behind her, there\u2019s images of mythical creatures \u2014 goblins, dragons, hippogriffs, Pegasus-style flying horses, and wait, what do you call the serpents with wings? But Chappell was the queen of the castle from the start, stomping onstage to an orchestral metal fanfare, wearing a crimson pirate ensemble and her bat-wing fascinator. In one of the night\u2019s peak moments, she sat on her throne in a black cape, with a gremlin doll in her lap. \u201cThis is Shigella, my tour pet,\u201d she announced. \u201cShe\/they. And we\u2019re gonna sing \u2018Coffee.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Like most pop queens of our moment, Chappell builds her live show on straight-up Nineties guitar rock<\/a>. She\u2019s got a kick-ass metal band full of female headbangers, busting out the most classic rock-star moves. (Chappell is a huge fan of kneeling to worship the guitar hero while she plays a solo \u2014 a Seventies move that\u2019s never been more popular than it is in 2025.) But she also did a fantastic demolition of Heart\u2019s \u201cBarracuda\u201d \u2014 talk about a song that could have been written for her.<\/p>\n To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the crowd was dressed to kill \u2014 riding the subway to Forest Hills felt like part of the celebration, with all that leather and lace looking awesomely surreal on the E-train in the Saturday-afternoon sunlight. For \u201cKaleidoscope\u201d the venue lit up like a rainbow, part of the overall queer-celebration vibe, only fitting for the most famous out pop star since Elton. \u201cI just needed a place like this so bad when I was 13, 14,\u201d Roan said. \u201cI just wanted to dress up however I wanted to \u2014 I wanted to look weird. I hope that you know you\u2019re welcome here, however you show up today. You are cherished.\u201d<\/p>\n Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian\/New Zealand music and globally.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe Giver<\/a>\u201d absolutely destroys live, her Shania-coded sapphic stomp into country-disco boot-scoot territory. She coached the audience in the \u201cHot To Go!\u201d dance, though everybody pretty much already had that down. Chappell roared through the tunes from her debut The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princes<\/em>s<\/a>, which dropped almost exactly two years ago, in late September 2023. It\u2019s a measure of how massive her rise has been \u2014 a show that feels like a greatest-hits set, even though it\u2019s practically every song she\u2019s ever recorded. Onstage, she comes on like the one-woman culmination of so many all-time pop legends \u2014 the perfect fusion of Madonna\u2019s aggro flash with Cyndi Lauper\u2019s just-wanna just-wanna warmth and Prince\u2019s omni-erotic outrageousness.<\/p>\n But for all her ultra-modern sensibility, she\u2019s an old-school show-biz entertainer at heart. Her ballads were torch-song interludes that could have knocked them dead in lounges a century ago. For \u201cPicture You,\u201d she hung a blonde wig on the mic stand and sang to it. \u201cCalifornia\u201d had a great moment where she did a double take and laughed, \u201cI just saw someone yawn. That\u2019s insane.\u201d She reached back five years for \u201cLove Me Anyway.\u201d \u201cThis is an old one \u2014 I usually don\u2019t even sing it,\u201d she said. \u201cBut you guys will pull me through it.\u201d But then her tone shifted slightly when she reached for a skirt that wasn\u2019t there. \u201cMy god, I forgot my bottom\u2019s just a thong,\u201d she said. \u201cI looked at the screen and saw my ass.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Subway,<\/a>\u201d her summer single, is her most New York song \u2014 she debuted it at the local Governors Ball festival, in the summer of 2024, her last NYC show. It\u2019s an urban break-up ballad where the whole city seems to scream her ex\u2019s name, as Chappell sings, \u201cI\u2019m still counting down all of the days till you\u2019re just another girl on the subway.\u201d It was poignant live, especially when the crowd took over for the closing lament, repeating the lines, \u201cShe\u2019s got a way\/She got away.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019ve got something pink, will you put it in the air so I can see it?\u201d she requested before \u201cRed Wine Supernova.\u201d She got what she asked for with a sea of pink cowgirl hats. She introduced \u201cMy Kink Is Karma\u201d with the words, \u201cI wanna dedicate this one to my ex.\u201d But for the big finale, instead of an encore break, she just jumped right into the inevitable show-stopper \u201cPink Pony Club.\u201d You can tell it\u2019s a perfect pop song because it gets more effective \u2014 not less \u2014 when you hear it for the thousandth time. But to sing it in public is another level of devotion \u2014 belting \u201cSanta Monica, you\u2019ve been too good to me\u201d with thousands of other like-minded fanatics is a truly powerful experience.<\/p>\n The night began with drag performers and opening band Japanese Breakfast, doing songs from their new Melancholy Brunettes and Sad Women<\/em>. \u201cChappell Roan is definitely this artist\u2019s favorite artist,\u201d singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner said, adding at the end, \u201cSee you in the pit.\u201d (Sociological footnote: the biggest crowd sing-alongs on Chappell\u2019s pre-show mix tape were Gaga\u2019s \u201cApplause,\u201d One Direction\u2019s \u201cWhat Makes You Beautiful,\u201d and \u2014 the big surprise \u2014 \u201cStacy\u2019s Mom\u201d by Fountains of Wayne. Take a cosmic bow, Adam Schlesinger<\/a>.)<\/p>\n It was way back last October when Roan closed out her Midwest Princess<\/em> tour, after her explosive summer of 2024, when she just seemed to get twice as massive every week. Since then, her only American gigs have been her appearances at the Grammys, Saturday Night Live<\/a><\/em>, and Elton\u2019s Oscars party. But she\u2019s been a touring machine in Europe, making the festival rounds and bringing her castle with her. So it\u2019s a revelation to see how much more brash and confident she\u2019s gotten as a live performer\u2014 especially since she was never exactly slack in those departments. After the New York stand, she\u2019s got only four more pop-up shows, in Kansas City and L.A. As she explained<\/a>, \u201cI love these three cities so much + wanted the chance to do something special before going away to write the next album.\u201d<\/p>\n At one point, Chappell recalled, \u201cI think the last time I played New York, it was Brooklyn Steel\u201d \u2014 a club seven times smaller than Forest Hills. That was October 2023, when her album was just a few weeks old, yet she was already too massive for the 1800-capacity venue. That\u2019s one of the paradoxes of Chappell: She\u2019s a performer who\u2019s spent virtually her entire performing career playing rooms that feel ridiculously too small for her. But then, any room would. On a night like this, you couldn\u2019t imagine any place that could hold a pop-star presence this overwhelming, this emotionally intense, this committed. On the stage in her heels, it\u2019s where she belongs.<\/p>\n Set List<\/strong>Love Music?<\/h2>\n
\u201cSuper Graphic Ultra Modern Girl\u201d
\u201cFemininomenon\u201d
\u201cAfter Midnight\u201d
\u201cNaked In Manhattan\u201d
\u201cGuilty Pleasure\u201d
\u201cCasual\u201d
\u201cThe Subway\u201d
\u201cHot To Go!\u201d
\u201cBarracuda\u201d
\u201cPicture You\u201d
\u201cKaleidoscope\u201d
\u201cLove Me Anyway\u201d
\u201cThe Giver\u201d
\u201cRed Wine Supernova\u201d
\u201cCoffee\u201d
\u201cGood Luck, Babe!\u201d
\u201cMy Kink Is Karma\u201d
\u201cCalifornia\u201d
\u201cPink Pony Club\u201d<\/p>\n