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Chappell Roan might just go on singing these songs forever

Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times on

Published in Entertainment News

LOS ANGELES — "Someone's smoking weed at the trans fundraiser!"

That was Chappell Roan on Wednesday at the Shrine Auditorium, where somebody in the audience did indeed light up moments after the pop singer emerged onstage to headline Night 1 of her Super Graphic Spectacular.

Timed to mark the first birthday of Roan's Midwest Princess Project — a charitable effort meant to "uplift trans youth and LGBTQ+ communities through action, care and connection" — the two-day event features Roan atop a bill that also includes Lola Young and Tinashe (both of whom performed brief sets Wednesday) and Muna and Caroline Polachek (both of whom are set to play Thursday).

Night 1 also had the drag performer Kyra Jeté and the veteran performance artist Amanda Lepore; as the evening's host, the comedian Caleb Hearon wondered, "Why is there a man here?" then got the crowd cheering with a mention of Nithya Raman's mayoral campaign. Proceeds for the show will go to the Midwest Princess Project, which Roan says has already raised more than $800,000.

Do Roan's fans care that she has yet to drop a follow-up to her instant-classic 2023 debut, "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess"? No doubt they do; Roan herself sheepishly admitted Wednesday, "I haven't released a song in a long time."

But because she's such a skilled live performer — vocally precise, physically committed, emotionally generous — nobody here seemed to mind that she played basically the same set she's been doing for a few years now. I can tell you the weed smoker was far from the only one having a good time for a good cause.

In a sense, Roan's show is a thrill because its beats are so familiar: Given how many times she's sung the likes of "Casual" and "The Subway," to name two of her most grandly dramatic ballads, you'd expect her to have dialed in every musical detail as tightly as she has. (As she blasted off at the climax of "The Subway," she absent-mindedly twisted a braid of her hair in her fingers.) At the Shrine, though, each song was still a startling feat of storytelling — a raw wound that somehow hadn't healed at all.

 

Conversely, uptempo jams like "Femininomenon" and "Red Wine Supernova" retained every bit of their horny exuberance, even in a lyric about getting it "hot like Papa John" that a lesser singer might have come to regret. (Never change, Chappell.)

Wednesday's performance did offer two novel moments. Describing her guest as a "f— legend" who "honestly paved the way for me and all women in pop to do whatever the f— they want," Roan welcomed Christina Aguilera to the stage for a characteristically acrobatic take on her early-2000s hit "Beautiful"; Aguilera stuck around to duet sweetly with Roan on "Coffee," which she called her favorite of Roan's songs.

"From the moment I heard Chappell's voice, I knew she was a force to be reckoned with," Aguilera said.

Roan also performed her pal Olivia Rodrigo's song "Expectations," a remix of which came out last week with a new verse in which Roan laments the "classic L.A. behavior" of girls who ghost after a great first date. And she closed, as she always does, with "Pink Pony Club," her all-timer of a disco-glam anthem about finding her true self in a West Hollywood gay club "where boys and girls can all be queens every single day." But before that she thanked her fans for their energy and offered a small benediction in return.

"I believe that the world is gonna be a good place, and it starts with just being good," she said. "We can do that, OK?"


©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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