It took a huge scandal, a boost from Taylor Swift and years of effort for singer Sabrina Carpenter to finally taste success with Espresso.
No one will be able to escape him this summer. Sabrina Carpenter, a young 25-year-old American, has invaded radio stations and the TikTok application with her heady Espresso unveiled last April. A sunny hit calibrated for the summer period, which took the pop world by surprise, and will perhaps allow it to establish itself on the global mainstream scene.
The first results are encouraging: after ranking third in the American charts, the song was certified gold single in France. A more than honorable score in a market dominated by rap and French-language music.
Above all, the singer from Pennsylvania has just transformed the test by taking the top spot in the American charts with her new single, Please, Please, Please. The very first number 1 of an already long career.
Because if the world discovers it with the title EspressoSabrina Carpenter is far from being a beginner. She started as an actress, in TV series, at the age of 12. We saw her in New York – Special Unit in 2011, in The Goodwin Games in 2013 or in Orange is the new black in 2013. But also in the cinema, like in 2018 in The Hate U Give.
Finally she joined the Disney Channel stable in 2014, with the program Riley’s Worldin which she played one of the main roles until 2017.
Under-15 Star
The children’s channel has perhaps been one of the biggest star factories in the United States since its creation in the 1980s. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato: some of the biggest figures in the American cultural landscape got their start there as teenagers.
Like many of them, Sabrina Carpenter combined a career as an actress and singer under the Disney banner. She released no fewer than four albums between the ages of 15 and 20 with Hollywood Records, Disney’s label.
Like Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez in their time, she has essentially distinguished herself through wise pop, sometimes frankly childish, aimed at the same audience as that of television shows.
And like her predecessors, her twenties sounded the gong for Sabrina Carpenter: the time to break away from her child idol image and embrace more mature music. But all her efforts were nearly ruined by a resounding scandal, which occurred just at this crucial stage of her career.
The bad role of the love triangle
In January 2021, Sabrina Carpenter, 21, announced her departure from Hollywood Records for Island Records, a Universal label. The signal was clear: the time for big-girl pop had arrived. It was at the same time that the first major setback in her career occurred.
Because at the same time, another Disney muse is having huge success with her very first single. It’s Olivia Rodrigo, 17, who is attracting the sympathy of all the teenagers in the world with the tearful ballad Drivers License.
The young artist, hailed as a prodigy for her talents as a songwriter, sings of the pain of seeing the one she loves abandon her for someone else:
“You’re probably with that blonde, the one who makes me doubt myself all the time,” she laments in her song. “She’s so much older than me, she’s everything I want to be.”
Internet users carry out their investigation and agree on a theory: the boy in question is none other than the actor Joshua Bassett, with whom Olivia Rodrigo starred in a Disney+ series. The homewrecker, “blonde” and “older” can only be Sabrina Carpenter, since she was seen in the company of the young actor.
Drivers License immediately became a worldwide hit. The title set the record for the most streamed song in one day in the history of Spotify and remained at the top of the American charts for no less than eight weeks, making Olivia Rodrigo the new pop figure to follow… and by Sabrina Carpenter, who is just about to take her first steps in the big leagues, the number 1 enemy of a good part of America’s teenagers.
In the wake of Drivers LicenseSabrina Carpenter reveals Skin, his first single under the Island Records umbrella, the first song of his adult career. Which is immediately interpreted as a response to its supposed rival:
“Maybe you didn’t mean to, maybe ‘blonde’ was the only word that rhymed,” she sings.
The title fuels gossip but does not amass crowds: far behind Olivia Rodrigo’s scores, Sabrina Carpenter is content with 48th place in the American Top 50.
Killer team
The will of the young singer is not undermined and the development of her first adult album continues. For this, she summons some of the most popular songwriters on the pop scene: Julia Michaels (who wrote hits for Selena Gomez, Britney Spears and Justin Bieber), Amy Allen, author for Harry Styles and Justin Timberlake, Skylar Stonestreet (who composes for Dua Lipa), Jorgen Odegard (Imagine Dragons, Rosé from Blackpink)…
The sauce sets… slowly. When is the album released? Emails I Can’t Send in the summer of 2022, the reviews were laudatory but the first singles only charmed an audience of initiates, without managing to climb into the Top 100.
At a time when pop consumers are passionate about revenge songs, these titles in which artists talk about their private lives involving other celebrities, even their own song. Because I Liked a Boy do not unleash passions. However, there is an obvious reference to the consequences of Olivia Rodrigo’s card:
“Here I am, a homewrecker, a s***** / I get enough death threats to fill vans / Tell me who I am, since I have no say in the matter / All because I liked a boy.”
But a pop miracle eventually happens with the irresistible Nonesenseyet another extract from this album and undoubtedly its strongest song, which achieves the feat that all aspiring stars hope to accomplish: exploding on TikTok.
Providential virality
Nonesense is entitled to everything that can transform a song into a success on the application: first played back by Internet users, it quickly becomes the subject of choreography, also performed in countless videos.
The title can also count on a winning tactic from Sabrina Carpenter: each time she performs the song on stage, the singer changes the lyrics of the last verse to make a nod to the city where she is. Enough to add to the virality of the title.
Sabrina Carpenter is going to defend her album on the roads of the world: between 2022 and 2023, she gives 80 concerts between North America, South America, Europe (with a stop at the Zénith in Paris) and Asia in the sound frame Emails I Can’t Send Tour.
The most watched scene in the world
The final boost came last August when superstar Taylor Swift, in the midst of her mega-tour, The Eras Tour, takes Sabrina Carpenter with her for around thirty dates. On three continents, from November to March, the young singer is the first part of this titanic tour, the most lucrative in history, on which all the cameras in the world are focused.
Some would say that this cronyism is in itself a new tackle on Olivia Rodrigo, currently in the middle of a world tour to promote her second album. Because it was she who, at the beginning, was presented as the worthy heir to Taylor Swift.
She had even been officially dubbed by the new queen of pop on social networks. But their relationship has clearly cooled after a dark story of copyright, some of the tracks of the first album were considered too inspired by Taylor Swift hits. Since then, the two celebrities have never been seen together again.
It is with this reversal of the situation and a new exposure that Sabrina Carpenter has shaped her Espresso, whose hard-earned success actually crowns nearly 15 years of career. The rest will be written with the release of Short n’ Sweethis sixth album, expected on August 23.
