Has Sabrina Carpenter officially conquered London? A year after bestie and fellow Disney alumni Taylor Swift declared the “Summer of Sabrina” stateside, the army of fans clad in pink cowboy hats, bloomers and kiss transfers streaming into Hyde Park would seem to suggest so.
There’s no denying that she's managed to position herself as everyone's dream in some shape or form: simultaneously goddess and girl-next-door, vixen and sweetheart. Her Short ‘n’ Sweet London run is a text book display of star power captivating everyone from nine-year-olds to their accompanying dads – albeit for slightly different reasons.
Gracing London’s Hyde Park after a stellar double-header of indie darlings Beabadoobee and Clairo, she gives fans a discographic treat of her biggest hook-laden hits, which are mostly about boys, dating, growing up – she has after all in the past 10 years made the successful transition like others before her from cute Disney Channel kid to super-sexual blonde bombshell.
Opening with the popular hit “Busy Woman”, Carpenter subsequently encourages fans to sing louder the more colourful lines of “Good Graces”, gives a taste of country with “Slim Pickings”, and then replaces the pop with a mellow acoustic performance of “Sharpest Tool”, after an intimate intro around learning to trust yourself “more and more until you become the version of yourself you were supposed to be”.
Carpenter certainly knows how to get her fans in an absolute spin. She flirts with her audience, telling us she loves hearing us sing in a British accent, or gazing out at the massive crowd, commenting coyly, “Nobody showed up”. Whether dancing down the catwalk stage, face-timing the sister of a front row fan, or having a camera close up on a chat with a Sutton gal who “might just go to jail for being too beautiful”, her connection with the audience manages to make this massive outdoor gig into something somehow personal.
After wishing us “Happy pride!” and apologising for the “shady weather” as a segue into a fun little burst of “It's Raining Men”, there’s a costume change for “Nonsense” into a black sequined number.
She's toned down some of the more provocative elements for the all-ages crowd. The saucier bits of “Juno” are here accompanied by a t-shirt cannon into the crowd, and whilst there’s a bit of cavorting, nine-year-olds singing along to "Bed Chem" (incorporating a snippet of Ginuwine’s “Pony”) barely registers as unusual.
After soaring over a galaxy of phone lights in a crane for “Don't Smile”, the evening culminates with the viral hit “Espresso”, closing the night in an energy-fuelled blaze of glitter and fireworks – a final flourish that proves the Summer of Sabrina shows no signs of cooling.
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