It takes years to be an overnight sensation
Sabrina Carpenter is hardly new to the world of pop music, yet her career has only begun to skyrocket in the last couple of years. Despite only becoming a household name while opening for Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour, Sabrina has a discography dating back to 2015. Her career began on the Disney Channel as a child actress but her musical ambitions were clear from the start. With six albums out for public consumption, many new fans and the singer herself feel that “Short n’ Sweet” should be considered her true sophomore album.
Overnight sensations often deal with constant criticism as they have to learn while in the spotlight. Sabrina’s slow rise gave her time to hone her craft, allowing her live performances now to exude incredible confidence and star power. In times of frustration, she would remind herself that she was the tortoise taking her time to win the race, and the finish line entered her field of view with the release of “emails i can’t send.”
As someone who has been following her career since the beginning and even attended one of her concerts in 2016, it could feel like she is discrediting her time in the industry before the album’s release. However, she has only recently begun to feel confident in personalizing her work, imbuing her songs with personality, humor and charm that is not as present in the albums she released as a teenager with Hollywood Records. She signed with the record label at a young age and only got out of her contract with them before the “emails i can’t send” release. Many even speculate that her artistic voice was somewhat stunted by the Disney-owned company.
On the bright side, Sabrina was given time to understand the industry on a fundamental level and used her experience to individualize her live performances. The now iconic outros to her song “Nonsense” functioned as great marketing, allowing every audience to feel like they were getting a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and many of these ended up going viral on social media. She levied the exclusivity of concerts and was able to introduce new people to her music and personality. However, becoming a pop star is more than just getting people to listen to your music. One has to sustain the momentum, and Sabrina’s newest release “Short n’ Sweet” does just that.
Sabrina has an incredible talent for mixing sexual innuendo and crude lyrics with gut-wrenching and heartwarming songs, owning her sexuality on stage and in the studio in a way that still panders to the female gaze. Her hit songs like “Please Please Please” and “Espresso” solidified her pop star spot in the industry. Others on her album like “Don’t Smile” and Dumb & Poetic” reveal the more vulnerable side to Sabrina, all while playing into any negative perceptions that have been attributed to her. It is one thing to write great songs and another to make people laugh, and her humor is sprinkled throughout every song.
Sabrina’s slow rise to fame allowed her to hone her craft and prepared the artist for stardom. Her new tour hits all the marks with great costuming, fun performances, personality and featuring the incredible songs that launched her career. It has been said that it takes 10 years to become an overnight success, and Sabrina Carpenter’s trajectory in the music industry epitomizes what it means to be the tortoise.Â