Chappell Roan at the Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh. Four stars
“Thank you for being here,” Chapell Roan tells an audience of tens of thousands on the first of two nights at Ingliston. “This is my biggest headline show.”
Not for long, you’d imagine. It has taken the singer from Missouri nearly a decade to become an overnight success, but there’s no doubt she’s now one of the faces of pop in 2025. Her song Pink Pony Club is, frankly, everywhere, whilst her album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess - songs from which make up the bulk of the Edinburgh Summer Sessions setlist on Tuesday night - has become (after a slow start) a critical and commercial smash.
Roan’s impact is clear even before she plays a note at this marquee gig. Her audience has come decked out in cowboy hats (pink, naturally), cowboy boots (although a few cautious types have opted for wellingtons), eye glitter and the odd Pride flag. And that’s just the men.
Roan’s libidinous, assertive, unapologetically queer songs and her attraction to drag culture aesthetics have positioned her as a potential new Lady Gaga and it’s clear from the opening bars of tonight’s gig that she intends to seize the opportunity.
Emerging onto a set that is half Disney castle, half set for a vampire movie, Roan launches into Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl with a real energy and bite, backed by an all-female band who play hard. Even if you’re not familiar with her back catalogue it’s very quickly clear that Roan tends to deal only in one type of song, best labelled “bangers”.
Femininomenon, After Midnight and Naked in Manhattan all sound huge here and that’s just the opening run of songs.
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Dressed initially as a flame-haired harlequin (or maybe Harley Quinn cosplaying a jester), Roan is a compelling performer, a Disney princess reimagined by Tim Burton, channelling at various points Gaga, Stevie Nicks, even Shania Twain (on the country-flecked The Giver). There’s even a touch of Broadway about her, topped off by a voice that projects and projects (the sustain near the end of The Subway is quite something).
And what’s striking is how familiar this all sounds. Roan is not afraid to draw on the deep wells of American pop. At times she veers into eighties soft rock here. There’s even a cover of Barracuda by Heart, famously fronted by rock sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson.
It’s a slick show. Maybe too slick at times. Roan doesn’t interact with the audience much. But when she does it’s with real force.
“I know right now it’s really f****** scary for gay people, and I’m so sorry. But this is what pride feels like and this is what joy feels like, and this is what we have to hang onto,” she tells us before launching into her ballad Kaleidoscope, a performance that brims with real emotion. It’s a breathtaking moment.
This whole show is a reminder that pop music in the 21st century is female and in its own way still thrillingly oppositional.
A final run of songs that includes Good Luck, Babe!, My Kink is Karma and California - all potent, epic pop songs - suggests Roan is already something of a femininomenon herself. She finishes with an anthemic take on Pink Pony Club and you’re left thinking pop is in good hands in 2025.
What’s the betting she won’t be headlining Glastonbury next year? This show is made for it.
