Chappell Roan at New York’s Forest Hills Stadium: Review, Set List

As Chappell Roan once sang, in New York you can try things. So it was the perfect place for her to make her big American return. Saturday night in New York was Chappell’s first U.S. show in nearly a year, after her summer of conquering European festivals. She’s bringing it all back home with a limited series of pop-up gigs in NYC, Kansas City, and L.A., with her new “Visions of Damsels and Other Dangerous Things” show. 

Saturday night was a triumphant American homecoming for the Midwest princess, the kick-off for her four-night stand at New York’s Forest Hills Stadium. It’s a historic venue — and way too tiny for a star on her level. But that’s why the show had such a special and intimate feel, under the stars, on the first chilly night of September. The whole night felt like a coronation moment for her — and a communal dance-crazed celebration for her hardcore fans.

Her brief pop-up run is basically a victory lap, after her meteoric rise. “It’s been quite a year, huh?” Chappell told the crowd. “Thank you for sticking with me through it. It’s been really hard. And I’m so glad that I can come to work like this,” displaying her flamboyantly dressed self. 

She spent the night exploding with queer bravado and supernova presence, on a giant stage designed as a giant gothic castle. The crowd’s sing-along energy was ferocious from the start, with the opening one-two punch of “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” and “Feminomenon,” where Chappell asked “But does it happen?” and got 13,000 NOOOOOs back. Yet she can’t help being the super-est, graphic-est, ultra-modern-est force in the house.

When it comes to her Visions of Damsels aesthetic, she goes totally medieval with her fantasy castle, complete with staircase, parapets, drawbridge, and throne. Behind her, there’s images of mythical creatures — goblins, dragons, hippogriffs, Pegasus-style flying horses, and wait, what do you call the serpents with wings? But Chappell was the queen of the castle from the start, stomping onstage to an orchestral metal fanfare, wearing a crimson pirate ensemble and her bat-wing fascinator. In one of the night’s peak moments, she sat on her throne in a black cape, with a gremlin doll in her lap. “This is Shigella, my tour pet,” she announced. “She/they. And we’re gonna sing ‘Coffee.’”

Like most pop queens of our moment, Chappell builds her live show on straight-up Nineties guitar rock. She’s got a kick-ass metal band full of female headbangers, busting out the most classic rock-star moves. (Chappell is a huge fan of kneeling to worship the guitar hero while she plays a solo — a Seventies move that’s never been more popular than it is in 2025.) But she also did a fantastic demolition of Heart’s “Barracuda” — talk about a song that could have been written for her.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the crowd was dressed to kill — riding the subway to Forest Hills felt like part of the celebration, with all that leather and lace looking awesomely surreal on the E-train in the Saturday-afternoon sunlight. For “Kaleidoscope” the venue lit up like a rainbow, part of the overall queer-celebration vibe, only fitting for the most famous out pop star since Elton. “I just needed a place like this so bad when I was 13, 14,” Roan said. “I just wanted to dress up however I wanted to — I wanted to look weird. I hope that you know you’re welcome here, however you show up today. You are cherished.”

“The Giver” absolutely destroys live, her Shania-coded sapphic stomp into country-disco boot-scoot territory. She coached the audience in the “Hot To Go!” dance, though everybody pretty much already had that down. Chappell roared through the tunes from her debut The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which dropped almost exactly two years ago, in late September 2023. It’s a measure of how massive her rise has been — a show that feels like a greatest-hits set, even though it’s practically every song she’s ever recorded. Onstage, she comes on like the one-woman culmination of so many all-time pop legends — the perfect fusion of Madonna’s aggro flash with Cyndi Lauper’s just-wanna just-wanna warmth and Prince’s omni-erotic outrageousness.

But for all her ultra-modern sensibility, she’s an old-school show-biz entertainer at heart. Her ballads were torch-song interludes that could have knocked them dead in lounges a century ago. For “Picture You,” she hung a blonde wig on the mic stand and sang to it. “California” had a great moment where she did a double take and laughed, “I just saw someone yawn. That’s insane.” She reached back five years for “Love Me Anyway.” “This is an old one — I usually don’t even sing it,” she said. “But you guys will pull me through it.” But then her tone shifted slightly when she reached for a skirt that wasn’t there. “My god, I forgot my bottom’s just a thong,” she said. “I looked at the screen and saw my ass.”

“The Subway,” her summer single, is her most New York song — she debuted it at the local Governors Ball festival, in the summer of 2024, her last NYC show. It’s an urban break-up ballad where the whole city seems to scream her ex’s name, as Chappell sings, “I’m still counting down all of the days till you’re just another girl on the subway.” It was poignant live, especially when the crowd took over for the closing lament, repeating the lines, “She’s got a way/She got away.”

“If you’ve got something pink, will you put it in the air so I can see it?” she requested before “Red Wine Supernova.” She got what she asked for with a sea of pink cowgirl hats. She introduced “My Kink Is Karma” with the words, “I wanna dedicate this one to my ex.” But for the big finale, instead of an encore break, she just jumped right into the inevitable show-stopper “Pink Pony Club.” You can tell it’s a perfect pop song because it gets more effective — not less — when you hear it for the thousandth time. But to sing it in public is another level of devotion — belting “Santa Monica, you’ve been too good to me” with thousands of other like-minded fanatics is a truly powerful experience.

The night began with drag performers and opening band Japanese Breakfast, doing songs from their new Melancholy Brunettes and Sad Women. “Chappell Roan is definitely this artist’s favorite artist,” singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner said, adding at the end, “See you in the pit.” (Sociological footnote: the biggest crowd sing-alongs on Chappell’s pre-show mix tape were Gaga’s “Applause,” One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful,” and — the big surprise — “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne. Take a cosmic bow, Adam Schlesinger.)

It was way back last October when Roan closed out her Midwest Princess tour, after her explosive summer of 2024, when she just seemed to get twice as massive every week. Since then, her only American gigs have been her appearances at the Grammys, Saturday Night Live, and Elton’s Oscars party. But she’s been a touring machine in Europe, making the festival rounds and bringing her castle with her. So it’s a revelation to see how much more brash and confident she’s gotten as a live performer— especially since she was never exactly slack in those departments. After the New York stand, she’s got only four more pop-up shows, in Kansas City and L.A. As she explained, “I love these three cities so much + wanted the chance to do something special before going away to write the next album.”

At one point, Chappell recalled, “I think the last time I played New York, it was Brooklyn Steel” — a club seven times smaller than Forest Hills. That was October 2023, when her album was just a few weeks old, yet she was already too massive for the 1800-capacity venue. That’s one of the paradoxes of Chappell: She’s a performer who’s spent virtually her entire performing career playing rooms that feel ridiculously too small for her. But then, any room would. On a night like this, you couldn’t imagine any place that could hold a pop-star presence this overwhelming, this emotionally intense, this committed. On the stage in her heels, it’s where she belongs.

Set List
“Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl”
“Femininomenon”
“After Midnight”
“Naked In Manhattan”
“Guilty Pleasure”
“Casual”
“The Subway”
“Hot To Go!”
“Barracuda”
“Picture You”
“Kaleidoscope”
“Love Me Anyway”
“The Giver”
“Red Wine Supernova”
“Coffee”
“Good Luck, Babe!”
“My Kink Is Karma”
“California”
“Pink Pony Club”