Charli XCX Brought Out Chappell Roan for 'Boom Clap' — and That Was Only the First Surprise at the Kia Forum

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

The old song was the whole point. On Saturday night, October 17, at the Kia Forum in Inglewood — night one of two on Charli XCX's Music, Fashion, Film Tour — Charli paused the new-album show she has been touring since September and did the thing she has been doing all tour: she played an old song. Only this time she did not play it alone. Out walked Chappell Roan, and the two of them sang “Boom Clap” together — Charli's 2014 breakthrough solo single, performed live for the first time since 2023, according to setlist.fm reporting cited in coverage of the show. An arena full of people who came for the guitar-driven new era got, for a few minutes, the exact song that started everything.

Charli set it up like a story she could not quite believe herself. As reported from the stage, she told the crowd: “Every night on tour, I play an old song. I asked a friend of mine if she would come and sing an old song of mine with me, and they said, 'The only way I'm doing it is if it's this song,' so you have her to thank.” That is a perfect piece of guest-spot theatre — the surprise framed as a negotiation the headliner lost. And honestly? Roan had a point. If you are going to walk out unannounced at somebody else's arena show, you do not pick a deep cut. You pick the song the whole building already knows by heart.

A duet a decade in the making

“Boom Clap” is the song that turned Charli from a featured voice on other people's hits into a solo headliner in her own right back in 2014, and its long absence from her live show is part of what made Saturday land. Per the setlist.fm reporting, the song had not been performed live since 2023 — and had never been played in this album era at all. Bringing it back as a duet, rather than as a solo nostalgia lap, was the smarter move: Roan's presence turned a throwback into an event, two generations of pop provocation sharing the one song that bridges them. Clips from the Forum floor spread within the hour, which is exactly what a moment like this is built to do — except the room itself got something the clips cannot give you, which is the sound of an arena realizing what is happening about half a second before the chorus.

It also continues a pattern. This tour has quietly become a guest-spot machine. Just last weekend at Austin City Limits, Charli brought out Tinashe, and the two delivered live debuts of “Melatonin” and “Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore.” One surprise guest is a treat. A different one every weekend is a reputation — the kind that sells the remaining tickets in every city still on the routing, because nobody wants to be the person who skipped the night their show got the moment.

And then the show kept going

Here is the thing about Saturday: the Roan duet was only the first surprise. Later in the night, PinkPantheress took the stage to perform her own song, “Stateside” — not a Charli cover, not a duet, just a full guest performance folded into the middle of somebody else's arena show. Then The Dare joined Charli for the “Guess” remix — the version originally recorded with Billie Eilish — while underwear cannons fired into the crowd, a nod to the remix's infamous visual world that the Forum crowd received exactly as enthusiastically as you would expect. Three separate surprise appearances in one night is not a concert anymore. It is a variety show wearing a concert's clothes, and the crowd in Inglewood got all three.

The new era underneath it all

Strip away the guests and Saturday was still a statement show. Charli opened with “Rock Music,” the lead track of her eighth studio album, Music, Fashion, Film, released July 24. The album — launched with the singles “Rock Music” and “SS26” — is a deliberate guitar-based pivot away from the electro-dance sound of the Brat era, and opening an arena with its lead track, rather than easing in with a proven hit, tells you how seriously she is taking the turn. Artists at this level usually protect the new material, tucking it safely between the songs everyone paid for. Charli is leading with it, then rewarding the room with “Boom Clap” and a parade of guests. It is a confident structure: trust the new songs to hold the room, and trust the room to remember why it loved you in 2014.

The Music, Fashion, Film Tour is a 12-date North American arena run that launched September 11 in Philadelphia, with Underscores supporting. Night two at the Kia Forum is tonight, Sunday, October 18 — which raises the obvious, delicious question of what, exactly, she does for an encore after a Saturday like that. From Los Angeles the tour moves to Glendale, Arizona, and wraps at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on October 23. And Roan, for her part, is hardly done with Los Angeles: she headlines her own two-day Super Graphic Spectacular festival in LA next weekend. For a weekend that was supposed to belong to one headliner, Los Angeles pop fans are getting two. Keep up with the rest of this week's music stories in Previously's Music coverage, including Lucky Daye, K. Michelle and this week's New Music Friday rundown and Tank's record-tying 12th Adult R&B Airplay No. 1.