Bonnaroo 2024 Artist Spotlight: Chappell Roan

Like we’ve been doing for many years now, we’re making it our mission to help you get acquainted with many of our favorite acts from Bonnaroo‘s 2024 lineup. After roaring back to life in 2022, after two years off due to Covid and weather, and feeling fully like its old self again with a great fest last summer, this year marks Bonnaroo’s 21st installment (and 23rd anniversary), boasting not only another great and varied lineup, but also a continuation of some of the big changes and improvements rolled out over the last couple of years, with more flexibility in ticketing and camping, a reimagined “Outeroo” campground area, new activations, and further new ways to Roo. Back once again in its usual June 13-16 timeframe, we’re counting down the days until another great weekend on the farm.

As we dig through the entire schedule, we’ll highlight a spread of performers spanning across genres and stages, big and small, new and old, to bring you some of the most interesting, lesser-known, and most highly-recommended among this year’s crop of artists. And as our time at ‘Roo approaches, we’ll also be bringing you some special features and full list-style daily lineup guides, to help you plan your weekend ahead of the fest. While these previews won’t span every artist, and might omit some more obvious must-see acts, we hope they’ll serve as a way to help you navigate Bonnaroo’s gargantuan lineup, and to make the most of your busy weekend at the fest!

Grab your tickets right here if you haven’t already, and read on for our Bonnaroo Artist Spotlight!

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It seems like nearly every year, Bonnaroo books a hot up and coming artist for a tent stage slot in January, and by the time the festival actually arrives in June, they feel like main stage material. Last year it was Noah Kahan, and this summer it’s almost certainly Chappell Roan, who, if you weren’t familiar with when the lineup first dropped, you quite likely are by now! Born Kayleigh Amstutz, Roan hails from a small town near Springfield, Missouri, and had a religious, conservative upbringing, which, despite her early affinity for music, felt personally and creatively stifling until, after being discovered as a teen from her YouTube videos, she was able to sign a record deal, release debut EP, School Nights, in 2017, and begin to tour, finally allowing her to move to Los Angeles on her own, begin to live her life more freely as a young, queer woman, and to forge her campy, drag-inspired alter-ego as Chappell Roan, which is just as much its own identity as it is a stage name. Despite rave early reviews for 2020 single “Pink Pony Club” and early tours with artists like Vance Joy and Declan McKenna, Chappell struggled to make ends meet in those early years, eventually being dropped by her label and seeing her favored producer, Dan Nigro, become busy with Olivia Rodrigo, leading Roan briefly to return home to Missouri as she worked on new material. By 2022, however, Roan had refocused and moved back to LA, landing tours with Rodrigo and breakout queer pop singer FLETCHER, while also again working Nigro, whose profile had exploded thanks to Rodrigo’s SOUR, on a series of independent singles which would eventually culminate in her debut, last fall’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Propelled by bombastic, gloriously poppy, unabashedly queer and camp singles like “Red Wine Supernova,” “Femininomenon,” and “HOT TO GO!,” and heralded for her theatrical, drag-inspired, and ridiculously fun live show, which she again honed on the road with Olivia Rodrigo earlier this year, as well as some increasingly more high-profile headlining runs, Chappell Roan has been attracting more widespread fame faster than ever over the last year, and in the past few months especially, between the Olivia tour, a fantastic appearance at Coachella, and viral new single “Good Luck, Babe!” (the first taste of her next era), Chappell has proven to be a genuine pop star in the making. Her Bonnaroo debut is sure to be one of the festival’s highlights (and at this rate, perhaps the most packed tent stage set of the weekend).

WATCH | “Red Wine Supernova” (Official Video)