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It’s hard to single out any one song as the “secret weapon” of Chappell Roan’s “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess”; as the best pop debut of the 2020s, the entire album was pretty weaponized. But the ballad “Coffee”
certainly counts as a sleeper — and Roan was not sleeping on it when she used her set Wednesday night at L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium to turn it into a duet with one of the most celebrated ballad singers of the generation immediately preceding hers, Christina Aguilera. It’s funny, in a way, thinking about two of the powerhouse singers of the century teaming up to dial it down some for a song about… tentativeness.
Did they collectively nail the assignment? Of course they did, giving this quiet instant classic of a song its full due. Roan clearly has had lots of opportunity to bring out a vocal partner for this showcase before, so it’s nice she saved the slot for one of her heroines, and even nicer to hear two bravura singers join forces on a song that is inherently about restraint. Roan also awarded Aguilera her own solo spotlight moment in the show, to sing “Beautiful,” so there was no danger of the audience feeling her talents were underused. But these are two singers who can share a hushed song about the mere threat of romantic escalation and make it feel like the biggest song of the night.
Musical aspects aside, the eternally gay-friendly Aguilera also made for a good choice on a night that was a benefit for Roan’s Midwest Princess Project, a charity that supports LGBTQIA+ organizations across the country, with a stated emphasis on providing resources for trans youth. Wednesday’s show was the first of two put on by Roan at the Shrine under the banner of “The Super Graphic Spectacular,” which was meant to have a festival-like appeal, with multiple opening acts (albeit all brief ones) and a preceding outdoor street fair (albeit a damp one). In the end, it was fairly close to being a typical Roan headlining show that just happened to have “spectacular” bells and whistles attached — like Tinashe and Lola Young guest slots — but you could appreciate the more communal feel that Roan is trying to foster in putting on these charity gigs.
After turning “Coffee” into a duet, Roan also did exactly the opposite: She turned “Expectations,” her newly released recorded duet with Olivia Rodrigo, into a solo number for herself. That might have been the biggest surprise of the night, or at least as much as Aguilera’s appearance. After all, “Expectations” is still primarily Rodrigo’s song, even if she drafted Roan to write a new verse for herself as part of joining in the remix and video. So it was a happy kick to have Roan not treat it as someone else’s tune but one of her own now. Probably half the audience had had their joint effort stuck in their heads as an earworm all week, so there was cause for joyful eruption when the newly bisexual song fit right in amid the rockier selections from “Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” (with the common DNA of Dan Nigro as their mutual collaborator helping make that seamless).
Stylistically, Roan has been setting aside some of her harder or more regal imagery lately. (On Instagram, she actually declared herself as feeling “cute,” and her look at Rodrigo’s recent Daisy Chain Fields festival was an almost shocking departure.) But the production design and costuming for Wednesday’s show indicated that she’s not done conjuring up a palatial vibe just yet. The stage was filled with voluminous amounts of drapery and chandeliers, and Roan’s own corset-flavored gown could have been described as “leggy Versailles.” Probably the main brief for anyone designing an ankle-length dress for Roan is that she’s still gonna have to need to be able to do the high kicks.
There were plenty of those during Wednesday’s set, as the deeply energized singer again established that she is able to keep up with the higher-octave demands of a “Good Luck, Babe!” while also working the stage as well as anyone in pop works it. Her dancing remains probably the last thing left underrated about her. She’s come a long way since her earliest days touring behind “Midwest Princess,” which were more about the boots; no one working the same circuits right now does a better job of seeming prepared to execute some solo choreography and looking like she’s just spontaneously inspired in the moment. (The night was not completely without group choreography… but in Roan’s show, that’s limited to her doing a slight, witty bit of line-dancing with her two guitarists in the country-flavored “The Giver.”)
There was indelicate thrashing, and then some, in redhead-banging songs like “Karma,” still one of the best blissed-out/angry rock songs of the decade. And Roan, to her great credit, did not look at all like she was tired of leading the audience participation sections of “Hot to Go!” By the time “Pink Pony Club” inevitably brought things to a close, Roan had only been on stage for 75 minutes. But it felt like it’d been at least two hours, which is the happy byproduct of having a one-album catalog (plus four superior non-album tracks) in which every number feels like a greatest hit, something that few other artists have been been able to realistically claim. There is not much in Roan’s still-nascent repertoire that she can pull out that counts as a rarity, but the closest thing that came Wednesday night was the less reliably performed pre-stardom single “Love Me Anyway,” which she had to confess she had forgotten the words to at one point — a moment that came off as charming enough, given the complete lack of other apparent chinks in the night’s professional armor.
The entire first night wrapped up at 10:20 p.m., which was probably an hour or two earlier than anyone expected when they saw a bill with no fewer than five opening acts on the lineup each night. But everyone preceding Roan was on and off in fairly lickety-split fashion, with even the host, comedian Caleb Hearon, announcing at the outset that he planned to be quick about his standup duties. It was clear that there would not be big set changeovers when Roan’s all-female band came out at the very top of the evening, and it was clear that they would serve as house band for everyone but the drag artists, who were working to tracks. (That band has proved so adept and adaptable, by the way, here and in other circumstances, that you get the feeling they could step in at a moment’s notice for any talk-show or revue-circuit group around.)
Lola Young and Tinashe were the primary undercard attractions on night 1, and their sets were probably shorter than anyone hoped — especially Tinashe’s, which was only two numbers from her highly acclaimed new album (“Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore” and “I’d Rather Be Alone”), whereas at least Young had three (climaxing, of course, with “Messy”). On the other hand, if you believe in the concept of appetizers, these were just fine, in the context of a benefit where all timing bets are off. L.A. audiences will have chances for a full meal from either of them in months to come. (Young plays the Greek May 4, and Tinashe is at the Palladium Nov. 7 before coming back to this same block next May 15-16 to perform at the Shrine Expo Hall.) Ultimately, the night still ended up being centered around the headliner’s cult of personality, which would have been merited even if Roan did have anything else on her concert calendar, which she does not, a fact not lost on many in this crowd.
Before she returns to the recording studio (this is pure manifestation on our part, by the way), there is still Roan’s second night of the Super Graphic Spectacular on Thursday evening, with a completely different lineup of openers, apart from the emcee: Caroline Polachek, Muna, Alisa Mae, Fantasia Royale Gaga and Sweaty Eddie.
