A 90,000-strong Reading Festival crowd embraced camp country attire amid unusually intense heat. Chappell Roan performed on a gothic fairytale stage as the sun set, opening theatrically just after 7pm with foreboding orchestral music and animation. Her set capped an astonishing year that included a long-awaited breakthrough last summer, global chart-topping, record-breaking US attendances, a Grammy win and emergence as a queer cultural icon. Roan's rise followed being dropped by Atlantic Records in 2020 after early struggles; a later sleeper-hit album propelled her from small venues to major festival headline slots. Viral fan videos map the transition from intimate shows to enormous 2024 crowds.
Chappell Roan's set at the iconic British festival comes off the back of an astonishing year for the singer, who achieved her major - and long overdue - breakthrough last summer and in the months since has topped the global charts, broken attendance records across the US, scored a Grammy and become a queer cultural icon in her own right.
The 27-year-old's stratospheric rise to frame - from a small-time artist to a global superstar - has not been an easy one. Signed as a teenager, Roan was dropped by Atlantic Records in 2020 after she failed to make big, only for her album to become a sleeper hit and capture the hearts, minds and Spotify Wrapped's of people around the world.
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