The distance from Pechanga Arena San Diego to Humphreys Concerts by the Bay is only 3.8 miles, but for pop-music sensation Sabrina Carpenter, the two venues could almost be on different planets.
The former Disney TV star drew a capacity audience of 1,450 to Humphreys for her April 2023 show at the intimate outdoor venue. Her eye-popping return to San Diego on Sunday night saw her perform a sleek, Broadway-worthy spectacle for 11,000 deafeningly enthusiastic fans at Pechanga Arena, a concert for which — like every other date on her current Short n Sweet tour — all tickets sold out in a matter of minutes.
I am so, so grateful you guys are all here tonight, Carpenter said, after opening her Pechanga concert with Taste and Good Graces, two of the first three songs on her new album Short n Sweet.
Later, between her 12th and 13th selections of the night, Because I Liked a Boy and Coincidence, the 25-year-old Carpenter reminisced about her debut here seven years ago.
I remember the first time I played in San Diego, when I was quite young, for 200 people, she said, apparently referencing her 2017 De-Tour date at Balboa Theatre, where she was billed between also-rans Alex Aiono and New Hope Club. And now this arena is sold out! Thank you so much.
If House of Blues — where Carpenter performed here in 2019 — was also on her mind, she didnt say. But almost everything has dramatically changed for her in the just over 18-month interim between her Humphreys and Pechanga performances.
On Aug. 23, Carpenter, 25, released Short n Sweet, the third-biggest selling album of the year thus far. She also scored one of 2024s biggest hit songs with the frothy Espresso, which has been streamed more than 1.5 billion times on Spotify since its release six months ago.
To cap it off, last Friday saw Carpenter receive the first Grammy Award nominations of her career — six in all — including for Best New Artist and Album, Record and Song of the Year. On Dec. 6, shell star in the Netflix holiday special, A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter.
Sabrina Carpenter commanded the multilevel stage at Pechanga Arena Sunday/ (Alfredo Flores)
How did all this happen? Is there a pivotal key to her dizzying rise? Take a bow, Tay Tay!
Carpenter was the opening act last fall and early this year for 25 of Taylor Swifts Eras stadium tour dates in Latin America, Asia and Australia. Such a distinction provides priceless global exposure, as such past Swift opening acts as Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber can attest.
For good measure, Swift invited Carpenter to be a surprise guest at Swifts Oct. 26 concert at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, where they duetted on three songs. Swift subsequently wrote an Instagram post declaring that Carpenter is the pop princess of our dreams.
Make that, the naughty but nice pop princess.
Blonde and petite, the 5-foot-tall Carpenter has described Short n Sweet as her four-day ovulation album, a concept Madonna, Katy Perry or the late Prince may well wish they had thought of first. The dozen-song albums sexually charged lyrics boast more than a few expletives and innuendos, as did Carpenters performance of those songs here.
Former Disney TV star Sabrina Carpenter hit all of her marks at her Sunday concert at Pechanga Arena(Alfredo Flores)
Her opening number Sunday, the bouncy Taste, gives a shout-out to a oral sex. Bed Chem offers libidinous oohs and ahs between more references to oral sex and the size of a mans appendage. The perky Juno found Carpenter declaring: Im so fing horny! as the all-capital word HORNY appeared in enormous red letters on the video screens behind her.
During “Dumb & Poetic,” Carpenter’s lyrics referenced masturbation and legendary Canadian poet and singer-songwriter in a single couplet. (The same song contains the appealingly withering lines: “Youre so empathetic, youd make a great wife / And I promise the mushrooms arent changing your life”) Carpenter preceded the song with a 1966 black-and-white Canadian TV clip of Cohen being interviewed about poetry by Adrienne Clarkson.
Then there was the sweet, sing-song-y Please Please Please, which contains the admonishment: Dont embarrass me, mother. By comparison, the couplet My honeybee, come and get this pollen in Espresso — the 90-minute concerts closing number — seemed understated.
Of course, most of this is relatively tame by much of todays anything-goes pop music standards. And even when Carpenter was flitting about the stage wearing — in order — a red Victorias secret corset bodysuit with red garters, a short blue nightie, a black lace capri catsuit, and a glittery short top and mini-skirt, she came across less like an R-rated vixen than a flirty girl-next-door who may or may not be ovulating.
That persona was underscored by the multilevel, 1960s TV variety show-styled stage on which she performed. It seemed like a cross between a set from last years box-office smash, Barbie, and a backdrop for a dance scene in the 1964 Elvis Presley/Ann-Margret movie, Viva Las Vegas.
A seasoned entertainer, Carpenter commanded the stage throughout. She easily hit all her marks in a meticulously choreographed, three-act show that featured a five-piece band, two backing singers and nearly a dozen, constantly-in-motion dancers. Her ace bassist, Bobby Wooten III, last performed in San Diego in 2018 as part of David Byrnes American Utopia band.
She happily milked her adoring audiences applause with hand signals, and by pitting one side of the crowd against the other to see which was louder. The ensuing screams were so piercingly loud and sustained that the two grade-school girls in the row in front of me wisely covered their ears with their hands.
Carpenter is no vocal powerhouse, but her well-crafted songs do not require any heavy lifting, musically or emotionally. Nor did her bubbly cover version of Madonnas Material Girl. Carpenters use of electronic sweetening to boost her breathy singing merits little discussion in a pop-music era when lip-syncing is more often the rule than the exception.
What did make her concert more intriguing is that the audience — predominantly teen and tween girls, and some of their parents — enthusiastically sang along, word for word, to almost every selection.
Do Carpenters breezy-sounding odes to sex and desire convey a playful sense of empowerment, or a sense of young women seeking male approbation through sexual enticement, or something else altogether? Do such questions merit more discussion? You tell me.