I was lucky enough to experience a Sabrina Carpenter concert recently during the
Birmingham stop of the Short n’ Sweet tour. I must commend Carpenter for the show
she put on. The entire performance felt thoughtful and considered down to every last
detail, and the overall theming of the show was excellent.
Carpenter has created a fun and entertaining experience in her concerts through
various factors. Notably, the set on stage is a penthouse apartment and she cleverly
uses the different ‘rooms’ for certain sections of the show. For example, her
performance of bed chem while lying on a four-poster bed was a highlight of the
show for me. The set design also really compliments the overall theming of the show
because Carpenter introduces the concert as though it’s a 50s TV show that she is
the star of. This fits into her aesthetic beautifully but also allows for extra fun detail to
be added into the show. I loved that the cameras that were recording her on stage
were designed to look like 1950s TV cameras, and when she left the stage to do a
costume change, there were advertisements that appeared on the screens, featuring
puns and references to her music. It was these sorts of details that made the entire
experience feel well-thought out and kept it entertaining the whole way through.
Carpenter herself was working incredibly hard on the stage; she was performing
amazing vocals while remembering choreography and all her cues. Her personality
shone through in her performance and it really felt like she was having a great time
and living out her dreams which was lovely to watch.
My review of the concert itself is based off years of listening to Sabrina’s music and
the knowledge I have of the journey it has taken her to reach this new peak in her
career. So, what is it about the Short n’ Sweet album that has catapulted her into
new levels of fame and success? It is obvious that we should recognise Sabrina’s
natural vocal talents and charisma as a performing artist that have certainly helped
her make her way into the public eye. However, she has had these talents for a long
time, so there must be other factors that have made this era of her career so
different. If we look at it logically, Sabrina Carpenter and her team were very clever,
and they were able to recognise a clear gap in the market. At the time of releasing
her previous album, emails i can’t send, Sabrina started to see some success in her
more funny and upbeat pop music, despite the initial singles being ballads like
because I liked a boy. Due to the success of songs like Feather and Nonsense from
this album, Sabrina started to change her aesthetic slightly and lean into more of
these types of songs in her future singles for Short n’ Sweet. She was able to utilise
the momentum she had gained previously to release Espresso and have it become a
number one hit, and then continue again with that successful single to make the
entire album that is Short n’ Sweet. It is evident to me as a fan of Ariana Grande that
this could have been a place in the industry that her music could have headed, due
to the positions album having a similar 60s aesthetic, and including a lot of more
promiscuous songs. However, Grande went in a different direction musically with eternal sunshine and Carpenter was able to claim that role as the ‘blonde bombshell’
of pop music.
It should be noted that Carpenter’s new sound and presentation of her music would
probably not be as popular if it did not feel authentic. For someone who has followed
her career for a number of years, this album feels like a natural evolution for her and
the songs she is making now make complete sense to who she is as a performer.
Her personality really shines through when listening to her music and when seeing
her in concert, so I am personally very happy that she has managed to find her niche
in the industry and more people are becoming fans of the very talented Sabrina
Carpenter.