On Monday night in Vancouver, thousands of miniskirts and pink dresses descended upon the Pacific Coliseum for the last stop on the Canadian leg of Sabrina Carpenter's Short 'n Sweet tour. Last night's crowd was nearly five times the size of Carpenter's show in Vancouver last year on her Emails I Can't Send tour, which took place at the PNE Forum just minutes away from the sold out Pacific Coliseum. The meteoric rise to fame should come as no surprise — Short n' Sweet was one of the summer's best-selling albums, and a recently announced Primavera lineup has Carpenter headlining the festival along with Charli XCX and Chappell Roan, cementing her as one of this year's main pop girls.
The venue had already nearly filled up before Declan Mckenna took the stage in a Whitecaps jersey and opened up the show with tracks including a cover of ABBA's "Slipping Through My Fingers" and their breakout single "Brazil."
By 8:30, the stage was set, and an announcer welcomed us to the "Short 'n Sweet Show — filmed in front of a live audience." The curtains rose to reveal a TV show set straight from the '60s, complete with lamps, staircases, a bathroom and a video feed of Sabrina in a bubble bath, before rushing on stage to start the night with her album's opening track, "Taste."
The Pacific Coliseum was quite literally shaking as she worked her way through the first act. Each song's performance was music-video worthy in and of itself, complete with backup dancers, live camera feeds and a heart-shaped bed on which Carpenter finished the first act with a performance of "Bed Chem."
The production and fanaticism on display brought me flashbacks of seeing Taylor Swift's 1989 tour in Vancouver nearly 10 years ago. This comes as no surprise, as Carpenter joined Swift earlier in the year as the opener for a portion of the record-breaking Eras Tour. Even with the high production value and tightly choreographed routine, which was closer to a 21-track music video than a regular live show, Carpenter stopped to address the audience and show her love for Vancouver.
"I came here for the first time when I was thirteen, and I remember coming back when I was fifteen — and overall in my life, I've probably lived here for about six months in total. I love Vancouver so much — Robson street was my shit — and I filmed in Squamish, I was working in Squamish. I've just always been so pleasantly surprised by how beautiful and kind the people were here," she said, pausing after her performance of "because i liked a boy." "But then I started playing shows here, and that was a whole different story. The first show I ever played here was probably to about 400 people. It was quite intimate compared to this room which you sold out tonight, and it's all 17,000 of you rather than 400."
She continued the Sabrina After Dark act of the show by spinning a bottle to decide the surprise song for the night, which landed on "Busy Woman," an Antonoff-produced bonus track recently released exclusively to her online store.
Though typically I prefer a less polished and choreographed, more intimate setting for a show, I caught myself becoming even more of a fan with every song. Perhaps her background as a former Disney actress shone through, or her tastefully raunchy sense of humour and personality carried the show to the next level. "The only thing wetter than Vancouver is my… eyes when I cry," she told the audience before launching into "Nonsense," a track that's become a viral staple of her live performances, with a unique outro for each city she performs in. Tonight, the microphone "cut off" as she descended below the stage on a platform, and the screen informed us that Sabrina After Dark was experiencing technical difficulties.
Carpenter returned for the last act of the show — "Don't Touch That Dial!" — with Carpenter laughing and faux-bemoaning that, "I can't believe my mic cut out on the 'Nonsense' outro! It was the best one I've ever written!"
She finished out the night with "Dumb & Poetic," "Juno," "Please Please Please" and lastly "Don't Smile" ("Don't smile because it happened baby / Cry because it's over") as credits rolled on the Sabrina Carpenter Show — before she quickly reemerged for an encore of "Espresso."
As skeptically optimistic as I was to begin the night, Sabrina Carpenter blew my expectations out of the water, and proved that it's no stroke of luck where she's at now. Though I didn't exactly fit into the crowd as a 26 year old-man, unaware of the unspoken dress code of ribbons in your hair, by the end of the night I was a successful convert to the cult of Carpenter.