Fast-rising pop singer-songwriter Chappell Roan made a memorable appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” Thursday, wearing a wild feathered black outfit for her chat with the host before donning a completely different feather-bedecked dress to perform her latest single, “Good Luck, Babe!”
Her performance of the song was vivid, as she showed off her formidable vocal range on the final “I told you so!” segment of the song from a surreal garden-like setting, which begin and ended with her singing while seated on a throne shaped like a white swan.
The interview — her first on late-night TV — was lively from the start. Fallon pulled out a photo of a young Roan performing onstage years ago before a handful of people, which the singer recalled was from “this weird gay festival” and “I think it was the first time I performed ‘Pink Pony Club’ in front of the world,” she added, referencing her ode to a mythical nightclub “where boys and girls can all be queens every single day,” which appears on her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess.”
Fallon then pulled out a photo of the massive crowd that had gathered for her headline-grabbing performance at New York’s Governors Ball festival earlier this month, to wild applause from the crowd. Asked how that felt, she joked, “It feels like I was right all along,” before adding more modestly, “I felt kind of like I’d made it already, when people showed up to my concerts a few years ago, and this is the cherry on top.”
Asked about her style inspirations — a fair question when one’s interview subject is wearing a dress with two-foot-long feathers emanating from the chest, eye makeup including feathers and four-inch-long nails — she nodded to her stylist, Genesis Webb, and said, “We pull from drag, horror movies, burlesque, theater … I love looking pretty and scary, or pretty and tacky — or just not pretty, I love that too.”
Finally, Fallon referenced her quote from her Coachella performance in April, “I’m your favorite artist’s favorite artist — a quote that has come true many times in the past few weeks, with on SZA’s Instagram story and with labelmate Sabrina Carpenter covering “Good Luck, Babe!” on the BBC. Roan was quick to credit veteran drag performer Sasha Colby’s quote, “I’m your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen.”
A woman in the audience whooped when Roan mention Colby’s name, prompting the singer to say quickly, if unnecessarily, “There’s gay people here!”
Roan said, “That [quote] just hit me through the heart, and I hope some day Sasha watches me and hears that.”
With three songs currently in the Billboard Hot 100 and multiple festival appearances booked for the summer, Roan’s appearance showed how far she’s come since her TV debut on “Colbert” just four months ago.