The turquoise castle that towers over Reading’s main stage could have been plucked from a Disney film, but there’s nothing saccharine about the figure who emerges from it. Dressed in black and purple lace, horns crowning her head, Chappell Roan arrives like a gothic anti-heroine — part Maleficent, part pop star at the height of her powers. It’s a theatrical entrance, set to swirling orchestral overture, that immediately makes the field feel smaller, as if the entire festival has been pulled into her dark fairytale.
Roan has spent the past year turning festival appearances into something closer to cult rituals, and Reading is no different. The crowd – cowboy hats, glitter, pink bandanas – know the cues by heart. During ‘Hot To Go!’, they dutifully perform this gen’s YMCA. When ‘Red Wine Supernova’ begins, thousands hold aloft their pink accessories, a sea of colour against the dusky sky. What could feel gimmicky instead lands as communal: strangers linking arms, singing the chorus of ‘Casual’ as though it were a shared confession amongst the largely teenage crowd.
The setlist is a reminder of how much she’s achieved with just one album and a handful of EPs. ‘Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl’ opens with fizzing energy; ‘Femininomenon’ shows off her comic, bratty side; ‘Kaleidoscope’ gives her space to pause, thanking the crowd for “standing with me” as she reflects on the unlikely road to this moment. But it’s ‘My Kink Is Karma’ that emerges as the highlight — its venomous chorus spat out with relish, the synths swelling darker and sharper live. Here, her persona as theatrical villain and candid truth-teller crystallises into one: playful, camp, and menacing all at once.
Part of the thrill of a Chappell Roan show is this balancing act between spectacle and sincerity. She can build a medieval castle, dress Snow White’s nemesis, and still cut straight through with a line that feels painfully honest. That duality explains why she’s not just commanding massive crowds but inspiring them to show up in costume, ready to join the drama. During ‘Coffee’ she cuddles a small green gremlin: our girl might be a chart-topper, but she’s still an oddball at heart.
She closes with ‘Pink Pony Club’, skipping down the runway and blowing kisses, the supposed villain transformed into the party’s ringleader. In less than ninety minutes she reshaped Reading’s main stage in her own image: camp, queer, and gloriously uncontained.
Chappell Roan played:
‘Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl’
‘Femininomenon’
‘After Midnight’
‘Naked In Manhattan’
‘Guilty Pleasure’
‘Casual’
‘The Subway’
‘Hot To Go’
‘Barracuda’ (Heart cover)
‘Picture You’
‘Kaleidoscope’
‘The Giver’
‘Red Wine Supernova’
‘Coffee’
‘Good Luck, Babe!’
‘My Kink Is Karma’
‘Pink Pony Club’
