Supernova Chappell Roan heads for Osheaga

Between Montreal and Chappell Roan, it’s not just casualas she sings in one of her hits. Between Osheaga and the new pop supernova, it’s now serious. On Saturday afternoon, she attracted the largest crowd in the history of the festival for this time slot. A moment worthy of a coronation.

From a bird’s eye view, the crowd at Parc Jean-Drapeau must have been speckled with the pink of all the hats worn by the pink pony girlsthe name given to fans of the American singer who released her first album in September 2023, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.

Since then, the mid-twenty-something’s slow but steady rise has continued, so much so that between the time evenko announced her participation in Osheaga and today, Chappell Roan will have had time to become the princess of the pop charts, nothing less than the queen of the summer.

A true feminomenon, to borrow the title of one of his many hits (Femininonomenon), the first on the program of his short and euphoric 45-minute performance, which began at 3:30 p.m., a time of day when festival-goers are generally more of the type to chat nonchalantly on the grass of Parc Jean-Drapeau. The young women gathered at the front had been chanting his name for several minutes already: Chappell, Chappell, Chappell!

The exhilarating power of pop

Accompanied by three female musicians (a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer), their new icon materialized on stage not in a wrestling uniform, as was the case in front of an even more monstrous audience at Lollapalooza in Chicago on Thursday, but in a costume somewhere between a pastel butterfly and a wedding cake.

Chappell Roan has already visited Quebec twice (the Fairmount Theatre and the Bell Centre, opening for Olivia Rodrigo), but on Saturday afternoon, Montreal experienced its first real date. And like the girl whose charms she celebrates in Red Wine Supernovashe will have left a tender bite on Osheaga’s neck.

” Everything good happens after midnight ” she sings. Nothing good happens before midnight. And yet, in the middle of the afternoon, under the sun to be exact, everything that pop music can provide that is exhilarating and heady was concentrated in this moment worthy of a coronation.

The exuberance of pop, its essential power of subversion, its ability to offer a common language to teenage girls and the marginalized: few artists manage to get a crowd to sing along to a refrain that mentions cunnilingus, as is the case in Casualone of the best Lana Del Rey songs not written or performed by Lana Del Rey

” Are you hot? ” she would ask us during her cheerleading refrain. HOT TO GO!which on Saturday, in the scorching heat, sounded oddly like a rhetorical question. Men, women, young or old: everyone would take up with Roan the choreography of the refrain, which you will soon see your brother-in-law trying to repeat on the dance floor of a wedding.

Nothing was going to stop Chappell Roan, not the weather, not the crotch of her one-piece that would let her down in the middle of My Kink Is Karmabut that her team would manage to button up, while she continued to sing from the wings. She would address the Osheaga audience in French at a few moments, notably during the intro to this ode to the feeling of fullness that comes from the misfortune that befalls someone you hold against.

“I hate you, you’re stupid,” she told one of her exes, in Mitsou’s language, and demanded that one of the cameramen film her in close-up. But Chappell would not be able to offer the rest of her vengeful diatribe in French. Fuck, I’ve practiced this for weeks. “But there was no point in beating oneself up like that, everything was already forgiven.

Mutual love

With offset projections showing Chappell on a motocross bike or the lyrics of his songs in a font reminiscent of the web of the late 1990s (during his most recent success, Good Luck, Babe!)Chappell Roan is certainly in tune with the trends and aesthetics of the moment.

But because she is a studious student of 50 years of pop, because there is a little Madonna in her, a little Cyndi Lauper, a little Kate Bush, a little Lady Gaga, something in her purely irresistible music transcends the game of comparisons. Pink Pony Clubhis absolute anthem, describes a bar “where all the boys and girls can be queens, for a day”, and it is in this metaphorical place, no matter the city, that his shows take place.

“My name is Chappell Roan. I love you,” were her last words, again in French. It was clearly, undeniably, beautifully mutual. The next time she visits Osheaga, her show may not start after midnight, but it will definitely start after dark.