Chappell Roan's Dallas Show Was Joyful, Raunchy and Gay as Hell

This has been a star-is-born kind of year for pop singer-songwriter Chappell Roan, who played a sold out-show at Dallas' House of Blues Tuesday night.

Just for context, Roan came through Dallas earlier this year and played to around 250 people in House of Blues’ smaller space, the Cambridge Room. Six months later, she’s playing to 2,500 fans who all seem to know her month-old debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, word for word. Next year, she’ll be supporting Olivia Rodrigo’s world tour as one of the singer's openers.

And after that, who knows? It’s hard to fathom where this momentum may take her.

Roan’s success is thanks entirely to her fully formed sense of identity as a performer. She mentioned during her Dallas performance that her album has been in the works for four years, and that level of consideration shows. In a world of artists trying to find their place in an algorithm, Roan blocks out the noise and is unapologetically herself: her effervescent, energetic and shamelessly horny self.

In recent years, the persona de jour in pop songwriting has been the sad girl. Artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift circa Folklore have inspired hordes of copycats who are clogging Spotify recommendations with their cloying, carefully curated vulnerability. They’re moody and messy in the most generic way possible. Just like you, hopefully.

Roan stands apart by doing what none of these sullen Lanalikes can be bothered to do: have fun. Even her more deeply felt ballads contain her signature winking humor. Her single “Casual,” which details a doomed situationship, contains disarmingly raunchy lyrics like “knee deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out / Is it casual now?”

This lighthearted tone and commitment to smiling through the heartbreak could be felt at her Dallas show. Roan has made it a tradition to ask fans to dress up at her shows, assigning different themes to every city. With Dallas’ show falling on Halloween, fans were instructed to simply show up in their Halloween costumes. Fans obliged in style, with some still paying homage to Roan’s songs (many pink cowboy hats in honor of “Pink Pony Club”) and others showing up as everything from witches to Teletubbies.

Roan and her band had a Mean Girls theme going on for their costumes, with Roan dressed up as Regina George. Her signature red curls were swapped out for a sleek, blonde wig. She joked at one point that she had spent all day working on the lace front and it still looked “like cream cheese.”

Another tradition on Roan’s tours is choosing local drag queens as her openers, as her own onstage persona is heavily influenced by drag. Kylee O’Hara Fatale emceed the opening show, which included performances by Blue Valentine and Dia Monte, who had also opened Roan’s previous Dallas show. The costume dress code and the off-the-cuff tone of the drag show made it clear: This wasn’t just a concert. It was a party and a celebration of queer joy.

Roan’s music is more than just a collection of campy bops. Her songs contain empowering messages about reclaiming sexuality. In “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl,” the narrator has a bad date with a boring guy and resolves to hook up with a woman of her own caliber instead. The woman might also be an alien. The plot of this song is a little unclear, but the point stands.

At one point, Roan launched into an anecdote about terrible dating advice she’d received from relatives: Don’t wear red lipstick on the first date. Don’t wear anything too short or sparkly. The audience booed all of these.

The final piece of advice Roan poked fun at was the classic notion that you shouldn’t sleep with someone on the first date.

“This does not exist in the lesbian world,” Roan joked. “Lesbians sleep with each other before they kiss.”

This bit was used as segue into her single “HOT TO GO,” another upbeat number about wanting to hook up with a woman that comes complete with its own dance. Like “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl,” the song is silly, raunchy and refreshingly fun.

Typically in the media, joyful stories about queer women are few and far between. Bisexual women are presented as unfaithful homewreckers, and lesbian characters are killed off at an absurd rate. Even the aforementioned “sad girl” subculture is dominated by queer women.

But in Roan’s world, a queer woman is at the center of a story that’s optimistic and lighthearted. Drag queens get to be heroes in a country trying to paint them as criminals. There may be adversity and sad songs sprinkled throughout, but the show still has a happy ending.

The final encore of the night was Roan’s breakout single, “Pink Pony Club.” The song tells the story of a girl who leaves her small town to become a go-go dancer in Los Angeles, much to the disgust of her conservative mother. The song’s themes of freedom and unabashed self-expression struck a chord with the crowd at House of Blues, who sang along with their chests from start to finish.

That moment alone tells you everything you need to know about Roan’s meteoric rise. No matter what size room she’s playing, her shows are the Pink Pony Club to her fans. Wherever she is, she creates a place where fans can put on their craziest outfit and dance to fun, empowering anthems with people like them.

“I’ve never put on a night like this before,” Roan mused at the end of the night, aware as we were of the unique atmosphere. Whatever magic she captured that night, we hope to feel it again soon.