On October 13, 2024, Sabrina Carpenter made the 11th stop on the Short n’ Sweet Tour in Chicago. Nearly 20,000 people attended the sold-out show at the United Center.
Carpenter’s first arena tour was a culmination of years of hard work and dedication from her. After completing a four album contract with Hollywood Records (a Disney owned music label) that she’d been with since 14 years old, she signed with Island Records which is owned by major music label company Universal Records. This switch is what likely allowed her to be more experimental with her albums and marketing, leading to her extreme commercial success with Short n’ Sweet.
The show began with the song “Taste”, the first track off of the album. She then performed a sequence of other songs from her previous album, “Emails I can’t send”, and latest album “Short n’ Sweet”. Interestingly, the songs from her first four albums were completely absent from the show. The songs chosen to be played were all good choices. It is hard for most artists to choose which songs to cut and the songs that should be performed in the show while making everybody happy, but Carpenter did it exceptionally well. She did her radio hits such as, ‘Nonsense’, and ‘Espresso’, but also put in songs that her fans know better, like ‘Tornado Warnings’ and ‘opposite’.
The crowd was the loudest I have ever heard. The point in the show where the crowd was the most enthusiastic was when she had done the one randomized song on the set that changed every show. The song selected for the 10/13 show was ‘Mamma Mia’ from the movie ‘Mamma Mia’. Her cover of the song was done very well, her voice was suited for it perfectly, and at no point did she forget any of the lyrics.
Nearing the end of the show, the songs became slower, and had a more somber tone. When she sang ‘Don’t Smile’, most people would have thought the show was done, but she then played ‘Espresso’, one of her biggest, most well known hits. Then, she walked off the stage, and the curtain came over the stage and a video projected onto it of her telling everybody to have a nice night (with all the outtakes included).
Sabrina Carpenter has achieved a whole new level of fame within the last 8 months with the release of her songs “Espresso”, “Please Please Please”, and the album release “Short n’ Sweet”. Her success is a well deserved payoff of over eight years of work, and it seems like her music career is, only now, just getting started.
