If you are a chronically online twentysomething, you will likely know the answer when I ask: what do an apple, a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs and someone named Sally all have in common?
And no, it’s not the next New York Times Connections puzzle (although it could be). It’s pop’s latest best marketing campaign: celebrity concert cameos. Not surprise guests or bringing fans onstage—both of which are old hat—but a sequence that artists have started to integrate into their live shows, starring their famous friends.
It began with Charli XCX, the Essex-born singer who has dominated pop culture over the past year following the release of her album Brat and the subsequent tours. One of her songs, “Apple”, went viral after TikToker Kelley Heyer made a dance to its chorus. Soon, thousands of fans were recreating it at Charli’s concerts, with a lucky few being featured on the big screens.
But this is where things changed. The spotlight quickly shifted from keen fans to celebrities such as Troye Sivan, Chappell Roan and Gracie Abrams. Even Charli’s husband, the 1975’s George Daniel, made an appearance on the big screen after he refused to do the dance in a video shared by the singer. Fans lapped it all up.
This gimmick swiftly made its way into other popstars’ live shows, with “Espresso” singer Sabrina Carpenter “arresting” celebs with pink fluffy handcuffs for being “too hot”. Recent victims (or culprits) include both of the Fanning sisters, Dakota and Elle, who appeared extremely excited to be arrested during Monday night’s show in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, the artist known as Role Model has been joined on stage by the likes of Natalie Portman, Kate Hudson and Olivia Rodrigo during his recent tour, who all perform a quick dance as he belts out “Where is my Sally tonight?!” Then, as quickly as they appeared, the celebrity disappears into the wings again. As if to close the circle, it was the brat princess herself, Charli XCX, who performed this function during Role Model’s appearance on Saturday Night Live in October.
The basic idea isn’t groundbreaking—artists have often spotlighted their less-famous fans and involved them in their shows, whether it was Justin Bieber serenading his “One Less Lonely Girl” on stage or Usher feeding cherries to his hungry, hungry devotees. However, these celeb cameos do something a little different. They are low effort for the artist themselves—all they have to do is welcome a friend or showbiz acquaintance on to the stage, someone who is likely already attending the concert, and give them just seconds of shared attention—but the rewards are extraordinarily high. Those seconds turn into endless viral clips, memes and headlines.
And it doesn’t even end there: a quick repost from the celeb in question and the artist has immediately gained access to a whole new group of fans while still sating their loyal ones. The result? An effortlessly huge promotional campaign for their music, live shows and themselves. It’s a marketeer’s dream.
Ironically, this use of celebrity to market artists’ music also reminds audiences that these huge stars are also fans themselves, there to have fun just as much as anybody else. By the standards of modern pop tours, these interactions are not especially carefully planned or rehearsed but feel spontaneous, adding a sprinkling of that rarest commodity—authenticity—to proceedings.
Some might disagree and see these cameos as innately disingenuous, as something that subtracts from the fan experience by putting the limelight on someone who gets plenty of attention anyway. And if the phones weren’t out and the feeds did not care, would this have caught on in the first place? Probably not.
But the reality is that the phones are out, people will hit record, and it cannot be denied that the atmosphere changes for the better with each and every cameo. Crowds, artists and celebs alike seem to love these unifying little moments. So if getting Salma Hayek arrested for being too hot or watching Alex Consani rave on a big screen will help you sell a few extra tickets as an added bonus, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
