Chappell Roan

Snow white makeup, pink prom dress, lipstick-stained teeth, blue eye shadow, and a messy, massive orange wig. That’s a drag queen for you! On Thursday, Chappell Roan delivered a campy, early-Lady-Gaga-esque performance of some of the standouts from her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess on NPR‘s Tiny Desk. It’s a performance we’ll be coming back to when she blows up. Backed by a full band (all in matching silly, smeared makeup), the Missouri-born star opened her performance with “Casual.”…

Pink plastic cows and fake aqua-blue trucks decorated the lobby of the Wiltern during the last night of Chappell Roan’s U.S. Midwest Princess Tour in November. Her fans — donning sparkly devil horns and bedazzled bralettes decorated with hearts — posed for photos in front of the backdrops as they made their way into the art deco Los Angeles venue, where death-dropping drag queens lip-synced on stage. “The Wiltern… It doesn’t feel like a gay club, you know what I mean? It’s proper. It’s very fancy,” Roan, 26, says.…

Olivia Rodrigo was always an arena-selling artist. The opening night of Guts World Tour was proof of it. On Friday night, at Palm Springs, California’ Acrisure Arena, Rodrigo cemented her position in pop culture as a generation-defining artist. As a rockstar. And as an energy-filled idol that is only just beginning her career. Welcomed by a roaring audience of lavender-dressed kids, Gen Z’eers, gays, and cool moms, Rodrigo took the stage in a sparkly silver two-piece for “Bad Idea Right” following an intro…

From mega-pop sensations to underground gems Nobody likes you when you’re 2023, as Blink 182 warned us. But it’s a fact: years that end in “3” are always great music years, however they might suck for everything else. These were the albums (and songs) that kept me facing forward and moving on up all year. Some of them kept revealing new twists and surprises over time; other settled into a durable pleasure groove. Some are mega-pop sensations; others are underground gems. Pop…