Chappell Roan Finally Headlines L.A. With Pasadena Blowout: Review

“Can you believe it? We’re in Los Angeles!” exulted Chappell Roan, about halfway through the first of two appearances at Brookside at the Rose Bowl. It was understood, what she was saying. L.A. was starting to get a complex, when it came to Roan not having done a proper headlining gig in her adopted hometown since before her ascent began. Was she no longer having crazy visions here? Was Santa Monica no longer too good to her? Had she found a better place to dance than West Hollywood? Probably nobody really took it that personally, but all the victory laps she’s been taking over the last two years felt incomplete — like a lap-ette — without a proper major SoCal show to celebrate her ascendance into the pop firmament.

Now she had two, Friday and Saturday night at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl-adjacent Brookside (or, as some of us know it, “the golf course”). “The last show I played here was the Wiltern, which I think is a 2500-cap,” she said, referring to the pre-queen days of November 2023. “So it’s really crazy that we’re playing two nights. There’s like 40,000 people here tonight.” (At last, someone in the know tries to solve the mystery of how many bodies are allowed into Pasadena’s frequently used festival grounds, wholly accurate or not.) When it comes down to it, Roan could have easily performed next door, at the Rose Bowl itself, instead, and sold it out … which is crazy to think about for someone still touring behind a debut album. But whether that prospect was ever proffered or not, it felt right that Roan is choosing to close out this cycle doing outdoor shows in the three areas that ostensibly mean the most to her — New York, Kansas City (in her real home state) and now L.A. — with all-day doings that make them feel more like the Chappell Roan Festival than a traditional gig. Because some of her fans may have come to feel that Roan is as much a lifestyle as she is a musician, or as much an almost definable aesthetic as mere diva.

Friday’s opening show was a master class in pop showwoman-ship, with just about the only possible complaint being that she did not talk to the audience nearly enough in the first two-thirds. Then she made up for that, giving a heartfelt royal speech from a (yes) throne, constantly apologizing for rambling as she assured L.A. that there was nothing personal keeping her away all this while.

Chappell Roan performs on stage at Chappell Roan’s “Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things” U.S. Pop-Up Tour held at Brookside at the Rose Bowl on October 10, 2025 in Pasadena, California.

Christopher Polk/Variety

“L.A.’s my favorite city in the world, to be honest,” she said. “I’ve been living here nine years. I’m originally from Missouri and I had a really, really tough time the first five years. and I know there’s a lot of transplants out there,… I just appreciate the city I lived in, Altadena, which is close, and seeing the fires — I’m not gonna be eloquent about this — I loved L.A. more than ever than. When I saw how the community came together in Altadena to help, same with the Palisades, I just realized that I’m so lucky to be able to live here and to play here, and the city has taken care of me, and it’s my duty to take care of it back.

“Oh,” she added, as if suddenly remembering a vital item on her to-do list as she was checking out: “Fuck ICE.” She repeated the phrase, and then the crowd began chanting it, but she moved on rather than encourage it.

“I’m at a loss for words because I’m just so fucking nervous that this crowd is so big ” — she said it was her biggest headline show ever (the four shows she just did in New York were at Queens’ 15,000-capacity Forest Hills Stadium) — “and I feel always self-conscious at L.A. shows because, I don’t know, I just feel like there’s a weird professionalism out here, and I don’t wanna feel that. I want you to not feel that. I know there’s a lot of people in the music and film industry here, and I don’t want you to think about that. Don’t fucking talk about it! Don’t talk about work here!” The audience laughed, but she was serious, issuing a royal decree, and for a moment you could see a flash of the earnest righteousness that caused some of her Instagram Stories to go viral.

“I just want you to feel like you did when you were a kid, when you were 13 and free,” she concluded. “And I’m so grateful that I get to do that with my job and feel free to wear this on stage. And I needed this to just feel like myself. And I know if you move here how it can feel so… I’m just gonna shut up. We’re gonna do ‘Coffee.’ I’m done. There’s nothing else to say. I love you. I love the queer community.”

Linear? No. An artist having a deeply real moment — or three minutes’ worth of moments — in a show otherwise characterized by an hour and a half of abject professionalism and fail-safe show-biz prowess? Yes. That time-out was just what was needed to establish that her show isn’t too masterfully polished. She’s a mere 27, and it’s nice to have an element that feels a little rough and friendly around the edges, even as she already seems a lot more years into her queendom than she is. We want to feel her evolution, even if, as a show like this makes abundantly clear, she was born ready.

What is the Chappell aesthetic? There’s drag, and then there’s the drag-on-drag of girls playing boys playing girls playing… well, however that flow chat pans out. (Trixie Mattel was her first opener, while the sun was still out.) And then there’s getting medieval on your ass. It’s not often that the young ladies of Los Angeles get a chance to celebrate middle age — sorry, the Middle Ages — by wearing their conical herrin hats out in public, and there were almost as many of those in Pasadena Friday night as the requisite pink cowboy hats.

Roan wasn’t wearing one of those herself at the show, although she did have a headdress that looked like something broken off from an ancient cathedral, atop a gown that made her look a little like Stevie Nicks dipped into a giant vat of golden jewels. “Gothic” was very much the motif for the on-screen fonts, the castle-like set design (which might have felt slightly familiar to recent Gaga tour-goers), and the occasional rear-screen animation of dragons, goblins and sea serpents. Were we caught up in the middle of some vast fantasy novel, or just a night at the Abbey? Why not split the difference? Roan had announced on her social media ahead of time that the theme for the L.A. shows would be “mermaids.” When she appeared on the Brookside stage, there were definitely no flappy tails in sight; at least, this mermaid had a lot of leg, and showed a lot more of it as she shed layers over the coming 90 minutes. But you had to laugh as her look was topped off by a merman’s trident as her ultimate glam accessory.

But none of this quite speaks to the music itself, which outside of any fashion accoutrements or queer cultural iconography boils down to the universality of pop ‘n’ roll at its most gloriously melodic, emotional, cheeky and tenderly bombastic. “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” has absolutely no competition as the best debut album of the 2020s so far… and a strong candidate to just be named the best pop album of the 2020s, period. As has often been noted, it’s that rare album at the beginning of someone’s career that already feels like a greatest-hits. So maybe instead of the question “When will Chappell Roan make a second album?” (it’s only been two years, folks, but that is a contemporary-pop lifetime), maybe the question should be: Does she need to ever made another album? She would be within her full rights to tour off this one great album forever… all right, maybe not as forever as Lauryn Hill, but you get the picture. If she’s smart enough to not rush into the full-length next thing, we should feel lucky if she just wanted to tour this set of songs for another few years — they’re that satisfying.

For Friday’s show, Roan performed almost every song she’s ever released… with the early non-album single “Love Me Anyway,” performed as an enthusiastically earnest ballad out on the catwalk, taking the place of an album track that she has performed at some other recent shows but not this one, “Kaleidoscope.” But for the most part, it was the whole of the “Princess” album + “Good Luck, Babe!” + “The Giver” + “The Subway” adding up to the early career setlist that just about anyone else would die for after a 30-year career. Plus the one real outlier, an extremely faithful cover of Heart’s “Barracuda” (without the star cameo that Nancy Wilson made the other week in Queens). The guitar breaks in this one, played by Roan’s own all-female band, gave her a chance to do one of her favorite classic-rock moves, bowing and headbanging at the feet of a shredder, except, in the instance of “Barracuda,” the two guitarists and bassist all gathered closely around the kneeling singer. It might have been the first time the Heart classic has ever been played that it looked like as well as sounded like a shark feeding frenzy.

For anyone who might have taken a break from “Midwest Princess” for a while, it was a chance to reconsider which songs off the album are A+ songs (most of them) and A- cuts (a few) or, God forbid, a B+ (I would relegate only the sorta-generic “Guilty Pleasure” that low). The more electronic-leaning hyperpop of “Super Graphic Ultra Modern World” is as exciting a way to open a show as could be — and maybe as topical, with its prophetically hedonistic description of “making out while the world collapses.” (That and the next selection, “Femininomenon,” served as nostalgic reminders of the bygone songwriting time when Roan, not yet fully embracing her lesbian identity, had boys figuring intoher songs, if only as letdowns.) The overtly bisexual “After Midnight” pumped up the disco as Roan danced across a castle balcony and made us wonder why in the world this remained an album track and not the dance hit of the decade.

But Roan is never stronger than when she’s in ballad mode. “Casual,” in concert, was just a killer, as Roan wrenched every ounce of anxious emotion out of a lyric about the boyfriend or girlfriend who wants everyone to know that it’s not a truly serious thing, just a fling — and it remains amazing that she could throw in an outrageously funny line like the “eating me out” aside and actually have it reinforce the essential seriousness of the tune, not undercut it. (Looking at all the parents with little girls in the crowd, you had to wonder how they handled youthful queries about that chorus. Maybe they say it’s about spilling In-N-Out in the car?) The even more lovelorn “Picture You” was sung by Roan to a blonde wig that she placed on her microphone stand as a romantic foil. “Coffee” was another number in which the otherwise high energy was decaffeinated, beautifully.

On the upbeat side, “Hot to Go!” had Roan almost reluctantly admitting that she no longer has to teach the spelled-out hand gestures to her audience. (By the way, it’s the second time this year that the song has been performed at Brookside; in a sign of its cultural uibiquity, the Go-Go’s interpolated it — hand movements and all — into “We Got the Beat” while playing the Cruel World festival in the summer.) How good was Roan feeling? Good enough not to chew anyone out for non-participation, as she admitted is her wont. “There’s a dad that’s not doing it… usually I would stop and call you out and make you do it, but you look really nice, so I’m not gonna do anything about it.”

“Pink Pony Club” was the inevitable closer to the no-encores set. While everyone was looking for the Song of the Summer that never quite arrived, few have really kept track of the Song of the Decade sweepstakes, in which “Pony Club” is probably out in the lead as the frontrunner. Melodically impeccable and unforgettable, it also in a setting like this gave the audience a chance to explode with every feeling they’d either pent up or already let loose about queer people and queer-friendly people in America at a time when many would like to see all that pinkness relegated to wherever they’re trying to bury the rainbow flags. The pink folding fans being sold at the merch booths came out in force by the thousands, a commercialized way to participate in the catharsis.

But just prior to “Pink Pony” was a song arguably just as galvanizing — or at least it feels that way if you value the rock ‘n’ roll side of Roan as much as the toppermost-of-the-queer-poppermost side. “My Kink Is Karma” is the headbanging anthem that metal has failed to come up with for a long time — bitterness, vengeance and retaliatory joy all wrapped up in one ball that felt even more thrilling to experience with 40,000 or so people. It was a slamming song that not only crystallizes so many many of Roan’s genre-crossing gifts but makes you feel glad to be alive, and to be defying agoraphobia to be celebrating what we haven’t yet lost in popular culture, even if we’re losing it in our politics. For this and all the other slightly less fist-pumping songs that preceded or followed it, we should all tip our herrins.