Chappell Roan Rides The Next Wave

The jury is still out on whether American culture, or the music industry, can create another superstar, like Michael Jackson or Prince, like Madonna or Bruce Springsteen. Maybe Beyoncé, now 42 years old, and Taylor Swift, 34, are the last of their kind. But if future superstars are still possible, one of its more likely candidates — Chappell Roan — played at College Street Music Hall on Wednesday night to an ecstatic, sold-out crowd that couldn’t get enough.

The 26-year-old Roan — birth name, Kayleigh Rose Amstutz — has in some ways already had a long career. She scored her first hit at 17 with the single ​“Die Young,” a song she uploaded to YouTube that led to her being signed to Atlantic Records. In 2018 she moved to Los Angeles after a tour to begin her career in earnest; that was when she also could live openly as queer, leading to a full embrace of queer culture. 

Her next big song, ​“Pink Pony Club,” a song about a go-go dancer inspired by the Abbey, a gay bar in West Hollywood, was released in 2020. It got a lot of attention and press, but not enough for Atlantic, which dropped her the same year. She worked a variety of jobs to support herself and keep working on her music independently. The gamble so far seems to be working out quite well: she has toured nationally and internationally, opening for Olivia Rodrigo and as a solo artist, and in 2023 released her first full-length album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Her visit to College Street Wednesday night is part of the end of the tour in support of that album, which has taken her all over the world.

Roan has made a point of developing a visual aesthetic alongside her music, one that pulls explicitly from camp and drag culture; it’s evident in her music videos, in her merchandise, and in her stage show. This, in turn, carries over into her lyrics, which are sexually frank and full of both huge emotions and entirely self-aware humor. One song, ​“Coffee,” can break the hardest hearts out there with a raw, lyrical account of the inability to just be friends with an ex (“I’ll meet you for coffee / only for coffee / nowhere else is safe / every place leads back to your place”), while another, ​“Casual,” describes with equal parts self-loathing, sexual explicitness, sharp observation, and sarcasm a woman’s growing awareness that she’s in a toxic relationship. (In case the song isn’t clear enough about its arch sense of humor, the hilarious video really drives it home.)

In short — and it’s been said before — Roan has all the makings of a superstar. She’s following in the footsteps of Madonna and Lady Gaga in their cheeky yet deadly, serious interrogations of sex, love, identity, and power, and shares with them the keen sense that in her wielding of all of these elements, she’s the smartest one in the room, three steps ahead of her critics on all sides. But she’s no throwback: as the show at College Street amply demonstrated, she’s making music for right now.

The evening began, as many of Roan’s have, with a drag show, this one featuring Massachusetts-based queen Lulu Levity, New York City-based king Maxxx Pleasure, and Connecticut’s own queen Rozzz Aura (“three z’s, bitch. Catch it, don’t leave it”). All three unfurled elaborate, near-acrobatic performance that used every inch of College Street’s enormous stage. In classic drag fashion, those at the barricade threw dollar bills at the stage (some of which the photographers in the pit ushered to the stage when the throws fell short) while the audience cheered wildly. In between sets, each of the performers delivered their defiant best. Levity, who introduced the show, asked if anyone had never been to a drag show. When a few cheered, she shot back, ​“if you haven’t been to a drag show, you’re homophobic. Sorry — Republican.” The crowd laughed. 

But Levity also emphasized the importance of everyone feeling safe. ​“We don’t want anyone to walk out of here feeling less than what they came in with,” she said. She also thanked Roan, remarking that ​“it’s not often you see musical performers making safe queer spaces.” Aura echoed that sentiment with her turn at the mic. ​“Thank you for supporting queer and trans art, baby,” she said to the crowd.

The importance of safety in expressing oneself wasn’t lost for a minute on the crowd, which included two young women holding a sign ​“Chappell please come to our wedding,” two young men in matching pink and red sparkling cowboy hats, and a young woman and a young man who hugged for much of the show, the man wearing a leather leash. Even before Roan hit the stage, it felt as though a bubble of protection and tolerance had been created; for a couple hours, people of all identities, persuasions, and inclinations could be themselves without fear.

Roan exploded into her set with the first song off Midwest Princess, ​“Femininomenon,” which swings vertiginously from ballad to club banger in under a minute. The audience knew every word, and sang along, as Roan worked the stage, beaming and waving. The energy and singalong enthusiasm persisted through the next two songs, giving the first impression that the show might just be a wall-to-wall party — even as the crackling delivery never got in the way of showing the quality of the songs or the obvious musicianship on stage from Roan and her band.

But Roan had even more to say with her music. The fourth song, the ballad ​“Picture You,” got the audience to break out their phones and swing them like people used to swing lighters. The crowd then recognized ​“Casual” from its opening drumbeat, and a thousand voices screamed out the frank chorus in collective catharsis; the line ​“I know what you tell your friends” hit harder than any of the explicit parts.

The party started back up again with ​“Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” and ​“Hot to Go!” The chorus of the latter song spells out the three words in rapid succession. This reporter doesn’t know how long this has been going on, but at this point Roan fans already know that the spelling is to be accompanied by YMCA-like arm gestures, making the shapes of the letters as they’re sung. There would have been far more dancing in general if there had been any space for it; as it was, College Street was packed.

Roan then took the mood down again, performing ​“Coffee” accompanied by solo guitar. She followed that up with the stunning ​“Kaleidoscope,” a devastating song about a relationship that cannot be that also worked as the most romantic moment of the evening. Couples held each other close. Groups of people put their arms around one another and swayed side to side.

Then the concert took another turn, starting with a cover of Lady Gaga’s ​“Bad Romance” — making the connections between them explicit. The crowd lifted again, screaming along to ​“Red Wine Supernova” and ​“My Kink Is Karma,” which Roan dedicated to ​“anyone going through the worst period of their lives.” It was the biggest singalong of the concert, and the rowdiest applause. It was also the theme for the tour’s stop in New Haven, as declared by Roan back in January. 

It brought out the way Roan has taken the ideas from Madonna and Lady Gaga and moved them forward, for the next generation. Like her predecessors, Roan knows how to mine the heady stew of sex, love, and power for musical and cultural gold. But she has added a new ingredient, and maybe the most dangerous one of all: radical empathy.

It looked like the concert was over, but the audience was having none of it. They chanted for the song they still wanted to hear — ​“Pink Pony Club” — and Roan delivered. ​“I heard that there’s a special place / Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day,” she sang. The crowd was already singing with her. The voices rose, heading toward the chorus. ​“Won’t make my mama proud / It’s gonna cause a scene / She sees her baby girl / I know she’s gonna scream,” Roan sang. That last line acted as a command. When the chorus broke a second later, everyone joined in, at the top of their lungs.