Written by Lizzy Swinerd
On Friday April 12th 2024, three songs away from the end of her first ever Coachella set Sabrina Carpenter said;
“This is Espresso, hope you like it Coachella!”
Almost instantly Espresso was deemed the ‘song of the summer’. As the catchy, nu-disco-pop hit shot to the top of the charts, Sabrina’s level of fame grew on a cosmic scale. Now known for her witty, innuendo-filled songs, blonde curls and platform boots, Carpenter is a household name and a certified ‘main pop girl’, but she was not an overnight success. Her latest album may be called Short n Sweet, but the title is not derived from the length of her career.
At the age of 25, Sabrina Carpenter has been in the music industry for over a decade. She first gained a fan base from her YouTube channel, where she posted covers as part of the 2009 competition ‘The New Miley Cyrus Project’, ultimately coming third. Following in the footsteps of Cyrus, Carpenter went on to play the rebellious and fiercely loyal Maya Hart in Disney Channel's Girl Meets World from 2014-2017 and signed with the companies record label, Hollywood Records.
She released four albums from 2015 to 2019 before leaving Hollywood Records and signing with Island Records in 2021.
Under Island Records, Carpenter made the organic transformation from Disney kid to pop star. Her fifth album, ‘Emails I Can’t Send’ was an amalgamation of deeper, personal songs about heartbreak and fun, playful pop songs with tongue-in-cheek lyrics. This era also saw Carpenter upset the Catholic Church after shooting her “provocative” music video to ‘Feather’ in a Brooklyn church. “Jesus was a carpenter” she said in response to the backlash.
In 2023, after debuting a new look consisting of blonde bangs, corseted uber-mini dresses and platform boots on her own tour, Carpenter joined Taylor Swift as a support act on the Latin America, Australian and Singapore legs of The Era’s Tour. For each new location, she carried on the tradition from the ‘Emails I Can’t Send’ tour of performing a personalised raunchy outro to her song ‘Nonsense’.
“When you go down under, do you miss me?/ He’s so big, I felt it in my kidney/ Screamed so loud they heard it here in Sydney!” She sang to fans in the Sydney Accor Stadium.
As she’s grown as an artist, Carpenter has curated an easily identifiable sound and look. Blonde curls, sixties style clothing, powder blue and platforms are all Sabrina staples. After growing into a more playful, flirty sound during the EICS era, she released 'Espresso' - a smash-hit polished summer anthem, full to the brim of racy, nonsensical lyrics like ‘I know I mountain dew it for ya,’ and ‘move it up, down, left, right, oh, switch it up like Nintendo.’ In the world of Sabrina Carpenter, grammar does not exist (exhibit A: "thats, that me espresso"), nor does it need to.
After the global success of 'Espresso', ‘Please, Please, Please’ was released alongside a dark, sultry music video featuring Carpenters (ex) boyfriend, Irish actor Barry Keoghan. Was it a good idea to cement a lover into her musical history? Yes, because ‘Please, Please, Please’ became Carpenters first US Hot 100 Number One single and enabled her to make history as the first female artist to hold both the Number One and Two positions on the UK charts for three consecutive weeks.
Sabrina Carpenter once said, "I’m working late, cos I’m a singer". She wasn’t lying. Her third single, ‘Taste’ debuted at Number Two in the US, but spent twenty weeks at the top of the UK charts in 2024, a record that hadn’t been reached in seventy one years. Something about the gory ‘Death Becomes Her’ inspired music video, starring scream queen Jenna Ortega, must’ve really resonated with the British public.
The 23rd of August should now be a national holiday, for that is a day that lives were changed. When a pop star releases lyrics as poetically playful as ‘Come right on me, I mean camaraderie’ the world shuts up and listens. Carpenter's sixth album, ‘Short n Sweet’, went straight to Number One on the Billboard 200 and all twelve tracks debuted in the top 50 of the Hot 100.
On the 23rd September, Carpenter embarked on her first arena tour. She stood blinking under the stage lights in the Nationwide Arena in Columbus in nothing but a towel before grinning and revealing a sparkly baby-pink bodysuit. Sabrina feigned annoyance at being too short to reach the descending silver microphone before singing the opening line of ‘Taste’: "Oh I leave quite an impression, five feet to be exact."
Structured like a vintage television show set in a New York apartment, Carpenter and her dancers took the audience on a girls night out. From the getting ready segment in a babydoll dress to the chords of ‘Good Graces’, sitting on the toilet to sing ‘Sharpest Tool’ and playing spin the bottle to select a surprise cover song in a sixties inspired conversation pit, the ‘Short n Sweet’ tour brought the album to life. The most viral moment took place during Juno, when Carpenter acted out a sex position on an ascending heart shaped platform.
From an outsider perspective, Sabrina Carpenter's most viral lyrics and trending moments may indicate that her success relies on one factor - sex sells - but those outsiders are wrong. Carpenter plays into her femininity and sexuality in a fearless way that is so obviously not for the male gaze. Her success is the result of building and nurturing a safe and empowering fanbase, (where nothing is too crude or rude for a woman to say or do) and getting creative with lyrics and genres until she found her sound.
She is respected and loved within the music industry, which became evident when Dolly Parton featured on ‘Please Please Please' on the deluxe version of Short n Sweet (the collaboration received like marmite, but was a huge moment all the same). After years upon years of hard work, Carpenter became a Grammy Award winning artist at the 2025 awards, winning Best Pop Solo Performance for ‘Espresso’ and Best Pop Vocal Album for ‘Short n Sweet’. She was also nominated four other times, two of which being artist and album of the year.
Most recently, Carpenter has closed out her Europe leg of the Short n Sweet Tour and has achieved her most impressive goal yet, a collaboration with Fortnite! Forget being a Grammy award winning artist, the video-game adaptations of her tour choreography and costumes have encouraged players to replace fighting with dancing - world peace is within reach!
It would be easy to go on and on about Sabrina Carpenter, the success she has accumulated over the span of a year is on too large of a scale to describe. After years of hard work and an onslaught of unnecessary public hatred brought on by her feud with another hugely successful pop star (at the fault of a man), she now has those people (and the world) in the palm of her hand, and rightly so. She really does leave quite an impression.
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