The meagre 1,200-capacity Olympia might feel like a step down for Roan — this month the 26-year-old performed in front of the largest ever crowd at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, an estimated 110,000 people. Not that the Irish audience will lack for enthusiasm. Taylor Swift’s Dublin gigs sparked a frenzy earlier this year and Chappellmania is just as real.
The lack of tickets may not be garnering as much sympathy as it did when it came to Swifties, but it is causing mass hysteria among frustrated fans. Roan, whose real name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, has been working for the best part of a decade on what looks like an overnight success. She was thrust on to the phone screen of every Gen Zer when her single blew up on social media at the start of the summer.
This month, Ireland became the first country where the song topped the charts. Her album claimed the top spot a week after. It is tipped to be part of an all-female best album shortlist at the Grammys, alongside Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa.
In a summer dense with women in pop dominating the charts, there seems to be no saturation point for girly pop. But the grittier bumps of Charli’s brat, the lighter jaunts of Carpenter’s and even the melancholic whispers of Billie Eilish are a world away from the space Roan has carved out for herself. Her cornerstones of queer love, situationships and the guilt of leaving an old life behind show her as someone unsure of the world around her but absolute in her own sense of self.
Her “favourite artist” slogan came via , where drag queen Sasha Colby proclaimed she was “your favourite drag queen’s favourite drag queen”. Roan performs drag herself and at her September show in Dublin she will carry on her tradition of having local queens open her shows for her, having put out a call out for Irish talent. She is doing something few of her peers are, which is treating her songs and live performances as a chance to reinvent herself every time.
On stage, she has sported camo corsets, Latex habits, a full Statue of Liberty outfit and, at Lollapalooza, Mexican wrestling gear, complete with mask. It’s all very Lady Gaga but in an entirely more thought-out way. It looks like Roan is playing dress-up in front of tens of thousands of people when, historically, this happened in dark clubs and childhood bedrooms.
Roan writes a lot about safe spaces and how important they are for queer people, herself included, while also having a real longing and nostalgia for her former life in Missouri. “I can hear your southern drawl a thousand miles away,” goes one lyric. Her music is reminiscent of Kate Bush, and the strong synth-pop you’d be used to hearing from Marina or ’80s Madonna.
She cites Lana Del Ray as a prominent inspiration, and also sees the fictionalised Hannah Montana as the ultimate pop star, elements of whom you can see in tracks like . Club culture plays a large role in her music, but in an entirely different way to Charli, as seen in songs and . For Roan, it’s about finding space for self-expression, which for many means moving away from home: “I heard that there’s a special place, where boys and girls can all be queens every single day.
” In a recent interview, she spoke about grappling with being recognisable, and how her red hair is a dead giveaway. She wears a disguise to go clothes shopping and says she misses anonymous socialising — doing drugs in public and “being a f**king freak at the bar”. While the serious undertone of her music resonates with her LGBTQ+ audience and straight women, Roan as an act is all about fun.
Whether watching live performances or listening privately, it is evident that she wants people to enjoy engaging with her work in a non-serious way. Roan grew up in a religious household in Missouri. She was signed by a record label and moved to Los Angeles but was dropped when her song did not perform as well as hoped.
She moved back home, saved up and gave it one more year in LA. She teamed up with producer Dan Nigro, who has worked with acts including Kylie, Olivia Rodrigo and Caroline Polachek. What cemented Roan’s success story was a North American tour supporting Rodrigo.
After that, her own tour and festival appearances took off during the summer. She has also found a home in the social media of every twentysomething female. And while the price of tickets for her Academy gigs was €23 in March, she isn’t going to sell one for anything close to that price any time soon.
There are Chappell Roan club nights popping up in venues in Dublin this month, and these may have to satiate many Irish fans’ cravings for now. Appropriate dress is encouraged, so for those unsure, just follow the trail of ghostly pale make-up, razor-thin eyebrows and fishnets and you won’t be far off..
