Chappell Roan Gives 'Em a Good Show at ACL Fest

For about a week there, no one was sure Chappell Roan’s Austin City Limits Fest set was going to happen.

In the span of a year (or, really, about five months), the singer went from dropped Atlantic Records recording artist to Olivia Rodrigo opening act to biggest pop star in the world. Her skyrocketing success proved to be a bumpy ride.

After she played to the biggest afternoon crowd in Lollapalooza history over the summer, she asked fans for off-stage privacy, which quickly landed her accusations of ungratefulness. When she refused to endorse Kamala Harris for president, citing “problems on both sides,” she became a political target. (She later clarified that she’d be voting for Harris, but maintained issues with the Democratic Party’s response to the war in Gaza.)

Understandably flailing under the microscope, the 26-year-old dropped out of the New York and Washington, D.C.-based music festival All Things Go, slated for the last weekend of September, just one day before her scheduled performance. Her set at ACL – moved from 4:20pm Saturday to 6:45pm Sunday to account for her growing audience – seemed shaky.

Once it was confirmed that Roan would show, fans set up camp at the American Express stage first thing in the morning, braving the heat to secure a good view (which proved necessary; based on drone footage of the show, Roan’s audience, stretching nearly across the entire length of the park, surely broke another record). Once she hit the stage, however, she (wisely) said little beyond the lyrics to her campy synth pop.

Perhaps taking her own advice (“Um, can you play a song with a fucking beat?”), Roan beefed up 2023’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (written with Dan Nigro, also Rodrigo’s go-to collaborator) to captivate a festival audience. On the studio version, the album’s mid-tempo production lands curiously flat, but playing live, guitarist Andrea Ferrero, bassist Allee Fütterer, and drummer Lucy Ritter enlivened the artist’s compositions. The band breezed through the dramatic opening of “Femininomenon” to get to its bubbly chorus (“Get it hot like Papa John/ Make a bitch go on and on”), while a sped up “Naked in Manhattan” transformed the song from a slow burner into an infectious sugar rush.

Heavily influenced by drag culture, Roan – whose curly copper locks matched her studded cowgirl outfit, complete with chaps, a belt fashioned as a necklace, and, of course, her dramatic Siouxsie Sioux eye makeup – got cheeky as she introduced her second biggest song, “HOT TO GO!”: “We’re definitely gonna teach you a dance, bitch.” Launching into the pulsing, Eighties Madonna-recalling track, she taught the audience the cheer’s accompanying YMCA-like letter formations. Nearly everyone obliged.

Roan’s huge, catchy hooks do a lot to explain her popularity, but it still felt incredible to witness such a large sea of people sing along to “Good Luck, Babe!”, a song about the openly lesbian artist’s ex opting to stay closeted, and “Pink Pony Club,” an ode to Los Angeles gay clubs. Never before has such a heartbreakingly, specifically queer line as “When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night/ With your head in your hands, you’re nothing more than his wife” been so widely accepted by popular culture. If only the rest of Roan’s proclamations went down as easily.

Wrapping up with the latter track, which the artist wrote with Nigro years before her breakout, Roan bid adieu: “My name is Chappell Roan. Thank you for having me.” The brevity of her farewell felt out-of-character for the confrontational artist, but since the internet can’t seem to be normal about her, it was probably for the best.

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Keep up with the latest ACL news and follow the Chronicle’s coverage from the fest at austinchronicle.com/acl.