On September 23, pop superstar Sabrina Carpenter kicked off her long-awaited Short n’ Sweet Tour in Columbus, Ohio. The arena tour comes after the release of Carpenter’s sixth studio album, Short n’ Sweet, which was her first to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart and has been wildly popular among fans. Songs off the album, such as “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” have been dubbed “song of the summer” contenders and earned hundreds of millions of streams. Celebrities like Selena Gomez and Jack Antonoff have been spotted at the shows.
Carpenter’s opener, Amaarae, starts the concert, and around two hours later, Carpenter herself begins performing. Carpenter’s set design is made to look like a penthouse. It is complete with every room, including a bathroom, and the atmosphere of the concert resembles a slumber party. Her opening number is “Taste,” the first track off of Short n’ Sweet. She performs in a Betty Boop-inspired corset, which she has worn in pink, blue, yellow and red color variations so far. She then continues the first act of the performance with songs such as “Good Graces” and “Lie to Girls,” as well as throwbacks from her last album, such as “Decode.”
Following these songs, she changes into a black lace catsuit with a feather boa and sings the hit song “Feather” from her previous album, Emails I Can’t Send. During this section of the concert, she plays a game of Spin the Bottle with her backup dancers and crew to choose her surprise cover of the night. As of now, she has sung “Mamma Mia,” “Kiss Me,” “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” “Material Girl” and “Busy Woman,” a song Carpenter only made briefly available as a digital download from her website. Following the cover, she sings “Nonsense,” but without the famous city-themed outros she previously sang while opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and her Emails I Can’t Send Tour.
Carpenter begins the last act of the concert with “Dumb and Poetic” and comes out in an evening-length two-piece in shades of pink, blue, black, yellow or red. She follows this with songs including “Please Please Please” and her final song, “Don’t Smile.” She has one song in her encore, “Espresso,” leaving the total duration of the concert to be about an hour and a half.
