By Brandy Hale
Staff Writer
Sabrina Carpenter, the pop singer known anywhere from Disney Channel's “Girl Meets World” to opening for Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour, has officially started her first ever arena tour.
Prior to the tour starting, Carpenter sent out a dress code for her fans to take inspiration from to coordinate with her tour outfits. On the tour, fans have been putting together outfits including hearts, bows, skirts and lots of sparkles. Every few nights she changes between her color palette of pink, blue, yellow and silver sets as a way to spice up her appearances and keep fans enticed.
The stage set is a house with rooms and a staircase, which she uses in several songs. A catwalk in the center leads to a heart-shaped stage near the middle of the pit.
Carpenter played her third show of the tour on Sept. 29 — a sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden. The singer performed all 12 tracks from her new album, “Short n’ Sweet,” along with eight from her older albums.
Yana Goldberg, a junior computer science major, described it as having “such a comfortable vibe, I didn't feel overdressed. It felt like a big girly slumber party.”
Carpenter’s Madison Square Garden debut was a very special night for her. She wrote on Instagram, “Nights I won't forget as long as I live!!! Nights I dreamt of since I was soooo little!! Thank you to each and every one of you for showing up and singing as loud as you did. I am a ball of mush I love you New York.”
One of the songs she performed from her newest album is “Juno,” inspired by the 2007 movie Juno written by Diablo Cody that follows a teenager encountering an unexpected pregnancy.
While playing the song during the performance, Carpenter picked a guy from her audience to showcase on the big screen before transitioning into the song.
“Wait girls [backup dancers] come here, come here, I’m sorry I think I just found my future husband in the crowd and I'm just like really confused,” she said. “Do you see him right there? Hi, what's your name?”
This bit gives the audience personal engagement and an opportunity to be selectively involved directly in the performance. She also does different poses for “Juno,” and fans get excited to see how she tweaks the performance each show.
A notable moment during the show was when Carpenter made a joke about Mayor Eric Adams after his supposed scandals for committing fraud. The New York Post reported that Carpenter may have indirectly led to the investigation of Adams after the priest that allowed her to film her 2023 music video for her song “Feather” was further investigated with ties to Adams.
The singer remarked, “So should we talk about how I got the mayor indicted?”
One of the biggest disappointments to fans was when Carpenter sang her song “Nonsense.” When the pop star opened for Taylor Swift, she became known for her famous outros to the song. They tend to be silly lines she came up with before or during the show. According to a list published by Genius, the singer has done a total of 118 outros.
Instead, she now makes a joke out of it by having the screens show a fake glitch.
“Two years ago, I made a random decision and it really changed the course of my daily schedule,” Carpenter explained at the 2024 Summertime Ball. “I just think over the course of time, I've run out of provocative jokes in every city, so I'm running low."
Carpenter redeemed herself by performing a special surprise song every show. At the New York performance, she performed a cover of Mamma Mia by ABBA.
Carpenter proved extremely successful by completely selling out Madison Square Garden. It was a truly unforgettable night.
