Chappell Roan’s incredible, epic performance at Reading Festival shows just how far she’s come

The heat was seriously over the top, particularly for the UK. The ground was dry enough to dust my white shoes beige and pink cowboy hats, boots and bedazzled vests were as far as the eye could see.

No, we weren’t attending a particularly colourful rodeo in a tumbleweed town, the 90,000 strong crowd at Reading Festival had donned their finest – and campest – c*ntry gear for the midwestern princess herself, Chappell Roan. 

Chappell Roan’s set at the iconic British festival comes off the back of an astonishing year for the singer, who achieved her major – and long overdue – breakthrough last summer and in the months since has topped the global charts, broken attendance records across the US, scored a Grammy and become a queer cultural icon in her own right.  

The 27-year-old’s stratospheric rise to frame – from a small-time artist to a global superstar – has not been an easy one. Signed as a teenager, Roan was dropped by Atlantic Records in 2020 after she failed to make big, only for her album to become a sleeper hit and capture the hearts, minds and Spotify Wrapped’s of people around the world. 

“The world just needed to catch up”

Her journey has been documented in several viral fan made videos showing her just a couple of years ago playing small venues to a few hundred people contrasted with the gigantic crowds she pulled at Lollapalooza and Coachella in 2024.

Whilst the crowds may have grown, the videos show the same performer and her success is a testament to an artist who has always known exactly who she is and the flowers she deserves – the world just needed to catch up. 

As the gigantic crowd made their pilgrimage from all corners of the event ground at Ritchfield Avenue to the main stage, the sun began to set and we knew we were in for something special – the huge, gothic fairytale castle that had taken shape told us as much. 

Ever the show woman, Roan’s set began theatrically at just after 7pm with foreboding orchestral music and an animation played on the stage’s giant screens that was like a cross between Disney’s The Black Cauldron and Sleepy Beauty. Roan, it seemed, was channelling Maleficent.  

Backed by her gothic set and an all-female band, Roan emerged with her back turned to the crowd as she began her first track “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl”, only furthering the suspense. When she turned, Roan was met with the earsplitting screams she is used to nowadays.  

Dressed in a purple and red ensemble, complete with a bat on her head, she was as much evil queen as she was pop-star royalty. 

Roan immediately showed her chops as an energetic performer who can easily command a crowd of thousands, turning Reading Festival into one massive dance party as she performed the vibrant “Femininomenon”, “After Midnight” and “Naked In Manhattan” in quick succession. 

But beyond the eye-popping aesthetics, Roan was at her most engaging when she slowed the pace down and performed her heartbreaking ballads “Casual”, “The Subway” – which zoomed to the top of the charts at the start of the month – and “Picture You”.

They are tracks that speak of love, loss and longing, universal experiences that were covered in wide breadth in Roan’s 2023 album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, as she put to music her journey exploring her queerness. 

“Lesbian country bop ‘The Giver’ had folks of all genders and sexualities cursing their ex”

The universality of the song’s themes, their aching lyrics and the genuineness of her feeling had the crowd in the palm of her manicured hand. The camera panned across the crowd, beaming onto the huge screens fading images of swaying teen boys in bucket hats and the tear-soaked cheeks of young women who no-doubt know love’s fine sting. 

Of course, the slow down was only an intermission.

Roan and her band led the crowd into “HOT TO GO!” with thousands of people dancing in unison to the “YMCA”-like lyrics and trying not to hit each other in the head with their elbows, whilst lesbian country bop “The Giver” had folks of all genders and sexualities cursing their ex in rampant joy.

The set, 90 minutes all in, felt like a concert of Roan’s rather than an appearance as one artist of many at a major festival. She performed every song from her 2023 album, older track “Love Me Anyway”, stand alone singles “The Subway” and “The Giver”, not to mention a powerful rock cover of Heart’s “Barracuda”. 

“Thank you for loving me and standing with me,” Roan told the audience before performing “Kaleidoscope”, no doubt a nod to her long journey to the top. “This is a dream come true, seriously.”

No surprise to anyone, Roan’s final tracks to end the set were, simply put, banger after banger. Lesbian favourite “Good Luck, Babe!” followed by the tongue-in-cheek “My Kink Is Karma” and concluded with the life affirming “Pink Pony Club”. 

“Pink Pony Club” was a sensational end to Roan’s set; the audience was bouncing in one exuberant mass, waving cowboy hats and boots in the air, singing every lyric like their lives depended on it.

It also felt deeply apt, a track about finding your true place in the world in the face of adversity and criticism. What could be more true of Roan, a queer woman from the midwest who was told she wouldn’t make it, only to be the artist of the decade?

Chappell Roan was an aesthetic tour de force at Reading Festival, a treat for the eyes and ears as much as – for this reviewer – the soul.