As the sun set on Reading Festival, the space in front of the main stage became a sea of pink cowboy hats, bandanas and decorated fans.
They were there, of course, for Chappell Roan: the midwestern pop sensation who rocketed to fame last year and whose star has been soaring stratospherically higher ever since.
It was an odd time slot. Roan has been closing festivals around Europe for the last three months, and here she was playing second fiddle to headliner Hozier, following on from a Rudimental set so packed that people were lifting up the walls of the tent they were playing in to get a glimpse of them on the decks.
Still, Roan was the most hotly anticipated act of the day – if not the festival. This, and Leeds, are her only UK festival dates (and her first UK gigs since those sold-out Brixton shows last year), and accordingly, the crowd came ready to party.
She delivered. In fact, she delivered a barnstorming, high camp extravaganza that ended up being as much a feast for the eyeballs as the eardrums. The stage itself was decorated like a medieval castle, complete with velvet-and-lace costumes for her band and penitent’s robes for the stage hands.
All very theatrical, and the perfect stepping-off point for her first song, Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl: a joyous burst of energy, and one that got the crowd jumping. That was followed by Femininomenon; from there, she worked her way through what felt like her entire back catalogue.
So many of those were bangers that, instead of a gig, what we actually got was an extended-length dance party. One where everybody was word perfect on every song.
Yes, there was The Subway (coyly introduced as “my new one”), but there was also the country twang of The Giver, a hard rock cover of Heart’s Barracuda (met with bemused excitement from the Gen Z crowd) and Red Wine Supernova. She serenaded a green wig on her mic stand for Picture You; she conducted the crowd during the now-obligatory dance for HOT TO GO! We even got a very early song, Love Me Anyway, which felt like a nice little moment of longtime fan service.
Though the set was almost 90 minutes, the energy hardly dipped – a testament to Roan’s performance and to her band, who vamped their way through her costume changes. And there were several, including one where she donned a black cloak and sat on a throne with a toy gremlin to sing her breakup ballad Coffee.
Unlike some of her other dates, the stage banter was kept to a minimum. One segment that sadly got cut was Roan crowdsourcing crowd complaints about their love interests during The Giver, but that didn’t matter. When she closed out with a two-hander of My Kink is Karma and Pink Pony Club (complete with fireworks), some people in the crowd started weeping. The other half were screaming along, so loudly they almost drowned out her vocals.
The whole thing was a raucous, joyous affair – even if Roan never produces another album, she could comfortably coast on this one for a long time.
Reading Festival continues; readingfestival.com
