Staff Writer Isabella Zbucki reminisces on seeing Sabrina Carpenter live, sharing personal highlights and tracing the star’s journey to captivating thousands of fans.
In the build-up to what was set to be an unforgettable night, I’d planned my outfit for weeks and revised the entire setlist. It’s safe to say that I was excited and this was the one event getting me through countless deadlines. However, the evening I thought would be a purely fun outing with a friend, quickly turned into chaos as we approached Waterloo. With no Jubilee line in sight, our only option was to take the 188 bus alongside other fans wondering the very same thing: will we make it on time? To put the stress of the situation into perspective for those who aren’t concert enthusiasts or Sabrina Carpenter fans: imagine running to your boarding gate with just five minutes until it closes or missing the opening of a football game only to find out your team has already scored. Thankfully, we made it with just 10 minutes to spare in time for the first song.
“Oh I leave quite an impression”. These are the first lyrics sang to open the tour, sending a wave of excitement over the 20,000 or so screaming fans, all in seeming agreement and dressed for the occasion in Carpenter’s signature heart cut-out corset or recreations of her music video outfits.
Having been fortunate enough to attend many concerts at the same venue, Carpenter’s intro stands out the most. Running across the stage in a towel, she seems completely unprepared for the show to start before throwing it off and revealing her bejewelled bodysuit. That night, its colour was dark red to match the Union Jack design draped around her with “your red flags are blue” written on her capezio tights, a reference to her song ‘Bad Reviews’. Over the course of a setlist spanning just over an hour, she takes us on a whistle-stop tour of what constitutes her house for the evening, inviting fans to a different room for each song.
A lot has changed since Carpenter last toured the UK. With two Grammy’s and a Brit award added to her ever growing list of achievements, it’s hard to believe that she was performing for audiences of 5,000 people just two years ago. Still, Carpenter appears to be unfazed by this. Her stage presence and ability to command such a big venue whilst engaging all fans during her performance is remarkable. You would think she had been performing in front of big crowds for years – that’s the best proof that she has been preparing for this moment her entire life.
The Short n’ Sweet Tour also marks the absence of her explicit and witty nonsense outros which have understandably ran their course. However, she continues to keep her fans on their toes by replacing the outros with Juno positions and arrests. We saw her ‘arresting’ none other than Emma Bunton from Spice Girls for being “too hot”. She then playfully asked fans: “have you ever tried this one?”, before lying on her stomach, eliciting great excitement from the crowd. The London shows come only a week after the backlash against her Brit Awards performance, which received over 800 Ofcom complaints. Once again, Carpenter appears unbothered by any criticism, consistently providing the same high level of performance – much to the disapproval of the mums and dads sat around me, who clearly missed the ‘parental discretion advised’ sign ahead of her song ‘Bed Chem’.
Finishing the show with ‘Espresso’, the hit that propelled her to even greater stardom and which recently supressed two billion Spotify streams, marked a perfect end to the night. Truth be told, my only criticism of the show is the brevity of the setlist. The removal of some of the ‘Emails I Can’t Send’ songs, including ‘Read Your Mind’, which made way for her latest single ‘Busy Woman’, sparked outrage amongst fans. For many, this would have been their first time and the only opportunity to see the star live. In a day and age where artists such as Taylor Swift are performing for over three hours, a one-hour-and-twenty-minutes show feels somewhat underwhelming. Although longer performances naturally tend to be more physically demanding, if Sabrina can pull it off, the solution is luckily quite simple: add songs, rather than remove them.
Still, the entire show was nothing short of a cathartic experience and singing every lyric alongside 20,000 fans left me with no voice by the end of the night. And for that I say thank you, Miss Carpenter. To make it better, the performance took place on International Women’s Day, which seems rather fitting. There was no better way to celebrate this occasion than with one of the most successful women of the 21st century, who, at just 19 years old, dreamt of selling out the O2 arena. Seeing her achieve that six years later serves as a poignant reminder, especially for younger audience members, that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.
