{"id":2084782,"date":"2025-10-11T23:13:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T23:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2084782"},"modified":"2025-10-11T23:13:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T23:13:04","slug":"review-chappell-roan-was-born-to-do-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/review-chappell-roan-was-born-to-do-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Chappell Roan was born to do this"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

A Grammy Award for best new artist. Four top 10 hits since September 2024. Sold-out gigs packed with admirers in pink cowgirl hats wherever she goes.<\/p>\n

At 27, Chappell Roan<\/a> has unquestionably become one of pop\u2019s new queens. But let it never be said that this powerhouse singer and songwriter rules without mercy.<\/p>\n

As her band vamped on the intro to her song \u201cHot to Go!\u201d on Friday night, Roan surveyed the tens of thousands spread across the leafy grounds surrounding the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re gonna teach you a dance,\u201d she said, though few in the audience probably needed the lesson at this point in Roan\u2019s ascent. For more than a year, social media has been awash in video clips of Roan\u2019s fans doing a \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d-like routine in time to the frenzied chorus of \u201cHot to Go!\u201d<\/p>\n

But wait a minute: \u201cThere\u2019s a dad in the crowd that\u2019s not doing it,\u201d Roan reported with practiced disbelief. The band stopped playing. \u201cThere\u2019s a dad that\u2019s not doing it,\u201d she repeated \u2014 less incredulous than reproving now.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he looks really, really nice, so I\u2019m not gonna do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
<\/picture>\n
\n

Roan\u2019s show Friday was the first of two in Pasadena to wrap a brief U.S. tour.<\/p>\n

(Brian Feinzimer\/For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Friday\u2019s show, which Roan said was the biggest headlining date she\u2019d ever played, was the first of two at Brookside at the Rose Bowl to conclude a brief run of U.S. concerts she\u2019s calling Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things. The performances in New York, Kansas City and Pasadena can be seen as something of a victory lap after the slow-building success of her 2023 debut album, \u201cThe Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess<\/a>,\u201d which beyond \u201cHot to Go!\u201d has spun off numerous other hits including \u201cMy Kink Is Karma\u201d and the inescapable \u201cPink Pony Club.\u201d<\/p>\n

That last song, which has more than a billion streams on Spotify and YouTube, documents a young queer woman\u2019s sexual awakening at a West Hollywood gay club; Roan\u2019s music sets thoughts of pleasure, heartache and self-discovery against a gloriously theatrical blend of synth-pop, disco, glam rock and old-fashioned torch balladry.<\/p>\n

Having spent this past summer on the European festival circuit, she\u2019s said that Visions of Damsels represents \u201cthe chance to do something special before going away to write the next album\u201d; the mini-tour also keeps her in the conversation as nominations are being decided for next year\u2019s Grammys, where she\u2019s likely to vie for record and song of the year with \u201cThe Subway,\u201d one of a handful of singles she\u2019s released since \u201cMidwest Princess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet as clearly as it showcased her natural star quality \u2014 the stage was designed like a gothic castle with various staircases for Roan to descend dramatically \u2014 this was really a demonstration of the intimate bond she\u2019s forged with her fans, many of whom came to the show dressed in one of the singer\u2019s signature looks: harlequin, majorette, prom queen, construction worker.<\/p>\n

An hour or so into her 90-minute set, Roan sat in a giant throne with a toy creature she called her tour pet and recalled her move to Los Angeles nearly a decade ago from small-town Missouri.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a really, really tough time the first five years,\u201d she said, adding that she\u2019d lived in Altadena when she first arrived. (In a bit of now-infamous Chappell Roan lore, she was dropped by Atlantic Records in 2020 after the label decided \u201cPink Pony Club\u201d was not a hit.) She talked about how much she loves this city \u2014 \u201cF\u2014 ICE forever,\u201d she said at one point to huge applause \u2014 but bemoaned the \u201cweird professionalism\u201d she can feel when she\u2019s onstage in L.A.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know there\u2019s a lot of people in the music and film industry here, and I don\u2019t want you to think about that,\u201d she said. \u201cDon\u2019t f\u2014ing talk about it. Don\u2019t talk about work here. I just want you to feel like you did when you were a kid \u2014 when you were 13 and free.\u201d She laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just gonna shut up \u2014 I\u2019m so dumb,\u201d she said. Then she sang the lovelorn \u201cCoffee\u201d like someone confessing her greatest fear.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Chappell <\/picture>\n
\n

Roan said Friday\u2019s show was the biggest headlining date she\u2019d ever played.<\/p>\n

(Brian Feinzimer\/For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Though the castle set was impressively detailed, Roan\u2019s production was relatively low-key by modern pop standards; she had no dancers and no special guests and wore just one costume that she kept removing pieces from to end up in a kind of two-piece dragon-skin bikini.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s because at a Chappell Roan show, Chappell Roan is<\/i> the show: a fearsomely talented purveyor of feeling and attitude whose campy sense of humor only heightens the exquisite melancholy of her music.<\/p>\n

Her singing was immaculate yet hot-blooded, bolstered by a killer band that remade songs like \u201cGood Luck, Babe!\u201d and \u201cRed Wine Supernova\u201d as slashing \u201980s-style rock; Roan covered Heart\u2019s \u201cBarracuda\u201d with enough strutting imperiousness to compete with Nancy Wilson\u2019s iconic guitar riff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Giver\u201d was a stomping glitter-country hoedown, \u201cNaked in Manhattan\u201d a naughty electro-pop romp. For \u201cPicture You,\u201d which is about longing to know a lover\u2019s secrets, Roan serenaded a blond wig plopped atop a mic stand \u2014 a bit of absurdist theater she played completely straight.<\/p>\n

The heart of the concert was the stunning one-two punch of \u201cCasual\u201d into \u201cThe Subway,\u201d Roan\u2019s most grandly emotional ballads, in which her voice soared with what seemed like total effortlessness.<\/p>\n

After that is when the singer noticed that kindly dad shirking his duties in \u201cHot to Go!\u201d Maybe the poor guy was just too dazzled to take part.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Grammy Award for best new artist. Four top 10 hits since September 2024. Sold-out gigs packed with admirers in pink cowgirl hats wherever she goes. At 27, Chappell Roan has unquestionably become one of pop\u2019s new queens. But let it never be said that this powerhouse singer and songwriter rules without mercy. As her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2084783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2084782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Review-Chappell-Roan-was-born-to-do-this.com2Fd52Fff2F4ae61a1847b1ab1346457212.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2084782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2084784,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084782\/revisions\/2084784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2084783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2084782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2084782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2084782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}