As night falls on Monday, September 23, the Berlin velodrome is invaded by a strange horde: thousands of imps, whose horns nod as soon as their idol, Chappell Roan, sings a song. As before each concert, the American invited her fans, on social networks, to dress according to the theme of the evening – in this case, My perversion is karma, the title of one of his pieces. In the music video for the song, Chappell Roan wears a black headband to glorify the Evil One and his skin is painted red and white.
Same accessory, same makeup: on Monday, the 10,000 faces that color the lights of the velodrome made the game. Their first concert in Berlin, in December 2023, brought together only 400 happy people. On August 31, the 26-year-old singer was scheduled to perform at Columbiahalle, which has a capacity of 3,500. Unfortunately, faced with exponential success and an agenda full of awards ceremonies of all kinds, the concert was postponed for a few weeks, in a room three times its size.
The Germans can consider themselves lucky: the Parisian event, scheduled for September 3 at the Bataclan, was simply cancelled. “Wow…Chappell exclaims, looking at the audience. I’ve never played in front of so many people! » – except at American festivals where, in recent months, it was the unexpected headliner.
Express promotion
What is the reason for this express promotion? In English, fold It refers to everything that deviates from the norm: wavy hair, deviant sexualities and other eccentricities. You have to see Chappell Roan perform the ballad. Imagine, on stage, to capture the extent to which she embodies quintessential perversion. See her messy red curls, her abundant rhinestone and turquoise makeup, her crimson fringed corset, studded with black stars on the nipples, her fishnet stockings sinking into long leather boots; listen to her sing constantly on the go, whose tremolos, from grainy lows to sharp highs, will resurrect former country divas, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline and all; seeing her, again and above all, waving a straight blonde wig, as one would with a puppet, throughout the piece.
The gesture is even more striking because it illustrates, better than any speech, the gap that separates Chappell Roan from the singer who competed with him, in 2024, for the top of the American charts, Taylor Swift. She straightened her blonde curls early in her career, like her most obvious role model, Stevie Nicks; Roan, on the other hand, makes her redheadedness the emblem of her extravagances, as did Cyndi Lauper or Kate Bush in the ’80s, to whom her synth-pop is regularly compared.
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