Slayyyter Is Following The Chappell Roan Path To Pop Diva-dom

When I attended Lollapalooza this year, I expected to hear everyone talking about headliners like Charli XCX, Lorde, and Olivia Dean, but the best part of any music festival is seeing which of the non-headlining stars draws the biggest crowd. I placed my bets on the quirky relatability of Audrey Hobert and the pristine Y2K-tinged dance-pop of Zara Larsson, but I was wrong. Without a doubt, the most oversized crowd of the whole weekend congregated for Slayyyter’s 2:45 p.m. performance. The huge surge for a surprisingly early Lolla set instantly reminded me of a similar situation a couple years earlier, revolving around another Missouri pop star who was about to take over the world.

Yes, I’m talking about Chappell Roan. Seeing the behemoth crowd at her 5:00 p.m. performance in 2024 — estimated to be one of the largest daytime Lolla audiences ever — is still my favorite experience at any music festival ever. And that August afternoon also kickstarted a period of unmitigated fame for Roan. She’d go on to win the Best New Artist Grammy a few months later, launch a massive single on Saturday Night Live, and become the new inadvertent queen of controversy, both in a positive sense and a trickier one.

Slayyyter’s reported crowd size of around 50,000 Lolla attendees is a little less than Roan’s estimated 80,000 in 2024, but they’re still comparable — especially considering Slayyyter’s set was a few hours earlier and on what I’d consider to be the traditionally less buzzy main stage. Also, Slayyyter was suddenly upgraded to the main stage at the last minute, in the same way that Roan was two years earlier.

In the days since her Lollapalooza debut, Slayyyter is already starting to see a similar mainstream bump as Roan. On Aug. 11, she finally cracked the Billboard Top 100 charts for the first time ever with the single she debuted at Lolla, “brand new chanel$.” And like Roan, the buzz around her potentially earning the Best New Artist Grammy has suddenly kicked into high gear.

In a stroke of midwestern coincidence, Slayyyter and Roan also share very similar stories of self-releasing music online for years in their Missouri hometowns before finally breaking through to worldwide audiences. Perhaps Taylor Swift’s recent Missouri love has enchanted the Show Me State with big popstar energy? Whatever the case, it feels like Slayyyter is about to be cranking it on a whole new level for the rest of 2026 and into 2027.