In the Midwest, royalty comes in a pink cowboy hat studded with jewels. As the crowd gathered in the House of Blues on an October night, multicolored lights flash. “Chap-pell! Chap-pell! Chap-pell!” The crowd chants. The princess emerges.
Chappell Roan, a shining star in the modern queer pop landscape, continued her Midwest Princess tour at the House of Blues in downtown Chicago. The crowd tended young and femme, eager to see Roan perform. For each show, Roan assigned concertgoers a theme; this week’s was one of her biggest songs, “Pink Pony Club.” Fans sported pink cowboy hats, sequined dresses, and glitter in homage to the song, a triumphant ode to letting loose and being yourself in the face of societal judgment.
Roan opens every concert with a drag show. On Thursday, the openers were three drag queens from the Chicago area: Kenya J. Sanchez, Veronica Pop, and Princess Janelza. The queens took turns performing dances to hit pop and rap songs, ranging from Kelly Clarkson to Nicki Minaj. When taking a break from cartwheeling across the stage, twerking, or hitting the splits, they made jokes like “Are you drinking? The drunker you are, the hotter we look. But we’re hot regardless.” Drag queens are pillars of what Roan deems the “local queer community,” and in each city, the local queens get the crowd fired up while spreading awareness of their endeavors.
Roan began the show with “Femininomenon,” the opening track to The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. The piece starts as a violin-accompanied ballad, but with the addition of a revving motorcycle and a steady drum beat, it sharply transitions into an upbeat expression of the need for women to stand up for themselves in relationships. A brief country guitar riff signaled “Red Wine Supernova,” one of Roan’s most popular tracks. The hardwood began to shake under our feet as fans belted the lyrics and turned to each other to chant, “I heard you like magic/ I got a wand and a rabbit/ So baby, let’s get freaky, get kinky/ Let’s make this bed get squeaky.” The crowd fed off Roan’s energy, turning the floor into a frothing sea of sparkling pink.
Seamlessly, Roan transitioned into “After Midnight,” which challenges her mother’s wisdom that “‘Nothing good happens/ when it’s late.” Since Sofia’s previous review of Roan, Roan has vastly improved the delivery of her songs, both in terms of her choreography but also her vocals. For this “After Midnight,” she added layers and texture to the music. In the second verse, she added a rounded pop to her vocals, “That’s my type of fun, that’s my kind of party/ Your hands on my body, your hot hands.” The crowd, now familiar with the music, fed her sassy energy. While Roan’s talent is evident in her recordings, she can’t help but add in extra flourishes when live, making for a breathtaking performance.
Though Roan’s lyrics are often explicitly sexual, making blatant references to sex toys and sex with women, there’s something earnest and untarnished in her voice, a vision of sex without grime and guilt. It’s a refreshing depiction of sex to hear from a female artist, who’ve traditionally been shamed for writing about sex at all. Songs like “Hot to Go!” and “Red Wine Supernova” capture a spirit of playfulness in these fleeting encounters. It’s more complicated than that, of course. She performed Josie’s favorite song, “Casual,” an angry ballad about a low-commitment relationship. The song features a pressing synth beat, and guitar slides were added in the live performance. At the beat drop in the chorus, Roan doubled over. The emotional truths of this pain, of the contradictions between what a lover may say and what they mean, come packaged with the pleasure.
Roan strutted across the stage, parroting advice her mother used to give her before pausing and staring down the audience. “You know what they say,” she said in time with the disco beat, opening Sofia’s favorite song, “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl.” A modern day mash-up of Madonna and Lady Gaga, Roan is all flamboyant energy. Channeling Madonna, she continued, “He doesn’t have what it takes to be/ With a girl like me.” Roan’s vocals overlaid the disco, making for a high-energy piece that’s impossible not to dance to.
Roan puts unique effort into making her fans feel special and seen. As the music stopped, Roan bit her lip, scanning the audience, taking in the outfits and the energy. Roan’s constant engagement with the crowd on a general and personal level has contributed to the dedication of her fan base, but also makes for an intimate concert environment as she figures out the relationship of her work to the queer and drag community. “The whole point of my project, which I now am calling a drag project, is expressing a part of me I didn’t get to express when I was living in a small Midwestern town,” Roan said. Sparkling and cat-eyed as she is now, Roan is a vision of the possibilities for young people who are barred from being their true, authentic selves. “The reason why I keep doing this project is simply because there are fourteen-year-old versions of me that really need this,” she said. A portion of the proceeds from Roan’s ticket sales goes to charities that support gender-affirming surgeries, suicide prevention among the LGBTQ+ community, as well as GLO, an LGBTQIA+ community center in the Ozarks, where Roan grew up.
One could consider Chappell Roan the new face of indie pop. She upgrades smooth-voiced ballads and high-powered synth-pop numbers with an elevated sense of freeness—and queerness. The tropes—big cities, dancing, falling in love for a day—are all there in the lyrics, but upgraded. At the show’s end, with her powerhouse voice and expert strut, Roan returned to the stage for an encore. The crowd chanted, “Pink Pony Club! Pink Pony Club!” We knew what was coming. Lights flashed pink over the faces in the crowd, singing and smiling, as Roan sang joyously for the final time that night. We were triumphant, dancing, in our pink cowboy hats.
