<\/p>\n
If you are a chronically online twentysomething, you will likely know the answer when I ask: what do an apple, a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs and someone named Sally all have in common?\u00a0<\/p>\n
And no, it\u2019s not the next New York Times Connections puzzle (although it could be). It\u2019s pop\u2019s latest best marketing campaign: celebrity concert cameos. Not surprise guests or bringing fans onstage\u2014both of which are old hat\u2014but a sequence that artists have started to integrate into their live shows, starring their famous friends.<\/p>\n
It began with Charli XCX, the Essex-born singer who has dominated pop culture over the past year following the release of her album Brat and the subsequent tours. One of her songs, \u201cApple\u201d, went viral after TikToker Kelley Heyer made a dance to its chorus. Soon, thousands of fans were recreating it at Charli\u2019s concerts, with a lucky few being featured on the big screens.<\/p>\n
But this is where things changed. The spotlight quickly shifted from keen fans to celebrities such as Troye Sivan, Chappell Roan and Gracie Abrams. Even Charli\u2019s husband, the 1975\u2019s George Daniel, made an appearance on the big screen after he refused to do the dance in a video shared by the singer. Fans lapped it all up.<\/p>\n
This gimmick swiftly made its way into other popstars\u2019 live shows, with \u201cEspresso\u201d singer Sabrina Carpenter \u201carresting\u201d celebs with pink fluffy handcuffs for being \u201ctoo hot\u201d. Recent victims (or culprits) include\u00a0both of the Fanning sisters, Dakota and Elle, who appeared extremely excited to be arrested during Monday night\u2019s show in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the artist known as Role Model has been joined on stage by the likes of Natalie Portman, Kate Hudson and Olivia Rodrigo during his recent tour, who all perform a quick dance as he belts out \u201cWhere is my Sally tonight?!\u201d Then, as quickly as they appeared, the celebrity disappears into the wings again. As if to close the circle, it was the brat princess herself, Charli XCX, who performed this function during Role Model\u2019s appearance on Saturday Night Live in October.<\/p>\n
The basic idea isn\u2019t groundbreaking\u2014artists have often spotlighted their less-famous fans and involved them in their shows, whether it was Justin Bieber serenading his \u201cOne Less Lonely Girl\u201d on stage or Usher feeding cherries to his hungry, hungry devotees. However, these celeb cameos do something a little different. They are low effort for the artist themselves\u2014all they have to do is welcome a friend or showbiz acquaintance on to the stage, someone who is likely already attending the concert, and give them just seconds of shared attention\u2014but the rewards are extraordinarily high. Those seconds turn into endless viral clips, memes and headlines.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And it doesn\u2019t even end there: a quick repost from the celeb in question and the artist has immediately gained access to a whole new group of fans while still sating their loyal ones. The result? An effortlessly huge promotional campaign for their music, live shows and themselves. It\u2019s a marketeer\u2019s dream.<\/p>\n
Ironically, this use of celebrity to market artists\u2019 music also reminds audiences that these huge stars are also fans themselves, there to have fun just as much as anybody else. By the standards of modern pop tours, these interactions are not especially carefully planned or rehearsed but feel spontaneous, adding a sprinkling of that rarest commodity\u2014authenticity\u2014to proceedings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some might disagree and see these cameos as innately disingenuous, as something that subtracts from the fan experience by putting the limelight on someone who gets plenty of attention anyway. And if the phones weren\u2019t out and the feeds did not care, would this have caught on in the first place? Probably not.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the reality is that the phones are out, people will hit record, and it cannot be denied that the atmosphere changes for the better with each and every cameo. Crowds, artists and celebs alike seem to love these unifying little moments. So if getting Salma Hayek arrested for being too hot or watching Alex Consani rave on a big screen will help you sell a few extra tickets as an added bonus, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.<\/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.prospectmagazine.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you are a chronically online twentysomething, you will likely know the answer when I ask: what do an apple, a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs and someone named Sally all have in common?\u00a0 And no, it\u2019s not the next New York Times Connections puzzle (although it could be). It\u2019s pop\u2019s latest best marketing campaign: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2173541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2173540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-rise-of-the-celebrity-cameo.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173540","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=2173540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2173542,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173540\/revisions\/2173542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2173541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2173540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2173540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2173540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}