sabrina was a carpenter
a story of girlhood
I’ve been a fan of sabrina carpenter since her first album, Eyes Wide Open, came out in 2015. I remember my sister getting a signed copy of the album on vinyl. That summer, before my family and I visited New York, I imagined myself walking through the city, Eyes Wide Open playing in the background. The title track made me feel happy and hopeful. The song opens with, “everybody loves to tell me, I was born an old soul..better keep my eyes wide open. There’s so much that I don’t know.”
Listening to Sabrina for the past nine years is like witnessing a coming of age story. She is a 25 year old disney turned pop star. The beginnings of her career are similar to that of britney spears, miley cyrus, hilary duff, selena gomez. She played Maya on the Disney Channel show Girl Meets World, a rebellious 12 year old who often got into trouble. Maya was funny, defensive, and cool—her character reminds me of Sabrina’s sharp and playful personality. I watched this show when it came out, at the age of 19 because I had loved Boy Meets World as a kid; the spinoff featured Cory and Topanga as parents to Riley, Maya’s best friend. The show is very wholesome, and I loved that it centered around these two friends growing up and finding their way together.
Girl Meets World ended in 2017 and by then Sabrina had released 2 albums; in 2019 she had five records out. There were a couple of hits, and loyal fans, but Sabrina didn’t reach mainstream success until 2022, with tiktok sensation Nonsense, and then Feather, her first single to reach the top 40. It’s been almost ten years since I started listening to Sabrina, and now I am watching her headline her first festival, Outside Lands. I’ve seen several other of her live festival performances (they record everything now), and am really pleased that because this is her first time headlining, she can play songs other than her biggest tik tok hits.
Her 2022 album Emails I Can’t Send found me in the middle of healing from childhood trauma. The first song is the title track of the album; it’s a slow piano build. Despite being about how her father ruined their relationship, the song keeps humor in its truth: “god i love you but you’re such a dipshit”; “please fuckin fix this”.
Almost every line hits home for those of us with daddy issues: “Thanks to you, i, i can’t love right”; “i blame you for every worst i assume”; “don’t think i’ll find forgiveness as fast as mom did”; “cuz you were all i looked up to, now i can’t even look at you.” The rest of the album chronicles a situationship, ending with the acceptance that there’s “nothing left to decode”. My favorites include the dreamy tornado warnings and country’esque already over.
Other singles for this album were skinny dipping (everyone hated that song but i thought it was comforting), fast times, and vicious. Nonsense was added as a single later, after her live outros became famous. Then came her new era: Short ‘n Sweet. Espresso catapulted to the song of the summer in May and Please, Please, Please was the perfect treat the first week of June. Something dark, sexy, and undoubtedly iconic.
And here we are at the end of the summer, waiting for one last hoorah; THE album. She has been working practically her entire life for this moment. It’s her 6th and most anticipated album.
As her performance at Outside Lands goes on, I watch as Sabrina’s comfortability on stage seems to grow. She reaches a special point during tornado warnings, holding her electric guitar. Sabrina speaks about how important “slowing down” is before she starts singing. When we reach the bridge, she’s smiling and hitting notes beautifully, laughing at her own lyrics—and I’m filled with the feeling that she’s created this all for herself. In this way, pop stars feel like mothers to me—nurturing the stage, the moment. They’re building us up and holding everyone there. It’s why we think we are so connected to these artists. They do a lot of work for us, saying what we couldn’t say, knowing what we’ve never known—and we worship them for putting the pieces together.
Since she was small, Sabrina has known that at the end of the day, she just wants to sing. Watching Sabrina on the Outside Lands stage, in her lingerie/cabaret/mermaid like costumes feels like both the end and beginning of a story. The journey of girl becoming herself.
