Sabrina Carpenter’s Madison Square Garden Debut Was a Dazzling Slumber Party
It’s Sunday evening in Manhattan, and someone is working late. They’re about five feet tall and perched over a heart-shaped toilet, inside the most sensual Barbie Dreamhouse you’ve ever seen. Wearing a lacy black jumpsuit that would put Sandy from Grease to shame, they’re about to sing about an ex who wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. But first, the bathroom needs some tidying up. They nonchalantly wipe down the toilet before taking a seat. “Gross,” they mutter.
If you think this is a strange bit for a pop star to perform onstage during their Madison Square Garden debut, you haven’t been paying attention to Sabrina Carpenter. She was a vital force in 2024’s pop girl summer, alongside Charli XCX and Chappell Roan. But her album title didn’t quite become a pop culture phenomenon, and she didn’t emerge from an apple onstage while smoking a joint in a Statue of Liberty costume.
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Instead, she’s the stealthy stunner, the lovable low-key weirdo who made out with an alien at the VMAs and whose smash hit was a nonsensical nu-disco song about coffee. (“Espresso” had a huge impact, including the sweet relief it provided to baristas who’ve had to endure customers pronouncing it “expresso” for years.) And the toilet moment was only one of many kooky highlights at the Garden. She even referenced the recent news that one of her video shoots may have indirectly contributed to Mayor Eric Adams’ scandals. She did that after a rendition of ABBA’s “Mamma Mia,” which she’d chosen to cover in a game of spin the bottle. Again, classic Sabrina stuff. “Damn, what now?” she asked. “Should we talk about how I got the mayor indicted?”
This night was about celebrating Carpenter’s rise, from her role as the female Shawn Hunter in the Disney spinoff Girl Meets World all the way to just days ago, when her new album Short n’ Sweet went platinum. Selena Gomez was there, as were hundreds of teenage Sabrina lookalikes in miniskirts, platform boots, and bows in their hair. There was a lot of screaming, and ironically the Garden’s Guest Services booth temporarily ran out of ear plugs. It’s officially fall, but as her friend Taylor Swift recently said, “Summer of Sabrina, and may it continue forever.”
The secret ingredient to the Short n’ Sweet tour is the element of nostalgia. The Dreamhouse setup doubles as a vintage television show set, introducing her young fanbase to what the Sixties looked like (you just know they’d love the Wonders’ TV moment in That Thing You Do!). The stage setup is complete with cameras, a narrator, and fake commercials and segments that appear onscreen between each act. You want a hot carpenter advertising sharp tools? You got it. An ad for those ceiling fans from “Please Please Please”? She has that, too.
So it’s not surprising that the evening began with a video of Carpenter in a bubble bath, completely shocked when the narrator tells her the Short n’ Sweet show is starting right now. She rushes out onstage wrapped in a bath towel, emerging between two shiny white staircases. She takes off the towel, revealing a bedazzled babydoll nightie with garters. This is her fourth show of the tour, so we’ve seen a baby blue dress and a pink one — but tonight, we get butter yellow.
She kicked off with the spicy Short n’ Sweet opener “Taste,” flanked by dancers. The song is rumored to be about a love triangle with Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, but all of that is secondary to her killer performance here. She sat at a shiny vanity, staring into the mirror. “I feel like I’m watching a Broadway show,” some girl behind me said.
She tore through the album highlight “Good Graces,” before she Dialed Up the Dolly and grabbed an acoustic guitar for the gem “Lie to Girls” (if you think it was a coincidence — no pun intended — that “9 to 5” played before the show, think again). Carpenter packed several genres into Short n’ Sweet, and she effortlessly displays them all on this tour, wrapping it in one cohesive bow — one that is most likely made of silk and littered with diamonds.
It’s almost impossible to read anything about Carpenter that doesn’t include the word “horny,” which she even had printed on custom tights during her Sept. 25 show in Toronto. She’s made it her entire brand, from the tour’s sexy slumber party theme to the ample sex-positive lyrics in her songs. That brings us to “Bad Chem,” which she performs in a heart-shaped silk bed, her powerhouse vocals delivering each line. “And I bet we’d both arrive at the same time/And I bet the thermostat’s set at six-nine,” she sings. (When she concludes with her silhouette and a dancer pretending to shed their clothes behind a curtain, I can’t imagine Mr. Feeny would approve.)
The “Nonsense” outros are gone, but she still tore through beloved cuts from 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, including “Because I Liked a Boy,” her witty perspective on the Olivia Rodrigo-Joshua Bassett media frenzy, and the breezy disco-pop stomper “Feather,” from the deluxe edition. That’s the video she filmed in the now-infamous Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Brooklyn, which may have played a part in the Adams investigation. She capped the song by quipping, “I’m playing at MSG, and you’re not!”
Carpenter cleverly introduced her band via an Eighties television theme titled Sabrina After Dark, their names appearing over a glittery city backdrop while she made an outfit change backstage. Later, the host gave us a recap: “Sabrina serenaded us by the fire! She sang us a tune on the toilet! Up next, the party continues. But first, get the tissues ready, because we have some hot breaking ballads in store!”
And we definitely needed those tissues, especially when she introduced “Dumb & Poetic” with a clip from a 1966 interview that Leonard Cohen gave to the CBC, where the late icon compares poetry to instructions on a shoe polish can. It’s fitting since the track calls out a dude who gets off to Cohen’s lyrics, but you better believe Carpenter’s fans were genuinely confused by the black and white video, probably wondering who that man was. From Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism to Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Well, the rise of wellness made its way in music this year, to an often disappointing degree. “Dumb & Poetic” is the antidote to this trend, with Carpenter making fun of men who meditate and take mushrooms. We’re so lucky to have her.
We already knew Carpenter is really, really funny, but her humor is more apparent than ever on this tour, usually appearing during her onstage banter. She joked about how superior New York water tastes, and playfully told the crowd “shut up!” when they wouldn’t quiet down. “I got to write this album Short n’ Sweet by just having a big ol’ fucking laugh with my friends,” she told the crowd. “And now everyone’s in the room having a laugh with their friends. Hopefully, we can keep that going.”
It’s always a surreal moment to witness a pop star’s arrival, and debuting at Madison Square Garden is always a bucket-list item — for the artist and their devoted fans. The Dunkin’ Donuts inside the venue weirdly does not sell donuts, but thankfully, there’s plenty of coffee. And hanging on a wall are artifacts from Marilyn Monroe’s 1962 birthday performance for JFK, which happened right here at the Garden. It’s perfect, considering Carpenter just wore a Monroe hairstyle at the VMAs (while also wearing one of Madonna’s dresses).
If we have one complaint, it’s that this performance didn’t get its own unique cover — Carpenter already sang “Mamma Mia” at the tour opener in Columbus, and it’s a shame she didn’t seize the opportunity to cover a New York-specific song. But no matter, she made sure to emphasize how much the evening meant to her.
“I’m so mesmerized by New York City,” she said. “This is like home to me. The first time I ever played in New York City, I believe I was 16 and it was the Highline Ballroom. Y’all were not there. My whole life I’ve always wanted to play Madison Square Garden, but I wasn’t sure if the first time I’d ever played, it would be to a sold-out crowd. So thank you so much.” The pleasure is ours.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Madison Square Garden Set List
“Taste”
“Good Graces”
“Slim Pickins”
“Tornado Warnings”
“Lie To Girls”
“Decode”
“Bed Chem”
“Feather”
“Fast Times”
“Read Your Mind”
“Sharpest Tool”
“Opposite”
“Because I Liked a Boy”
“Coincidence”
“Mamma Mia”
“Nonsense”
“Dumb & Poetic”
“Juno”
“Please Please Please”
“Don’t Smile”
“Espresso”
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