Pop music is back on the rise with a new generation of pop princesses at the helm.
Among the most prominent voices, alongside Olivia Rodrigo, Tate McRae, Victoria Monét, and Dua Lipa is Sabrina Carpenter, an American singer and actress. From her fifth studio album “Emails I Can’t Send,” to opening up for Taylor Swift on “The Eras Tour,” to performing at last month’s Coachella, Sabrina Carpenter is proving that she deserves to be a main pop girl.
Sabrina Carpenter was born in 1999 in East Greenville, Pennsylvania, about an hour’s drive east from Swift’s hometown of West Reading, Pa. She began her acting career in 2010 when she guest starred on the NBC drama “Law and Order.”
In 2012, Carpenter got her breakout role on the Disney Channel sitcom “Girl Meets World,” the spinoff of the 90s series “Boy Meets World.” After the success of “Girl Meets World,” she signed to Hollywood Records and released her first single “Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying.” March of that same year she released her debut EP with the same title. In March of 2020, she made her Broadway debut as Cady Heron in “Mean Girls” at the August Wilson Theatre, though it was short lived due to the Covid pandemic.
During the late 2010s, pop music was arguably the main genre that people listened to. Pop was on the radio, in stores, in restaurants— you couldn’t escape it. In the 2010s, Pop was dominated by icons like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, and Madonna. It then got passed to voices like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys, and Ariana Grande.
After Covid, though, pop music—like everything else—began to change, leading people to think that it was on the decline.
As everyone’s focus shifted to TikTok, it seems that artists started making music solely with the goal of having 15 seconds of it go viral on the app. According to The Medium, a music blog, the birth of new pop stars has become a rare occurrence. However, this hasn’t stopped Sabrina from making music she has always loved, and it is paying off. Like her mentor, Taylor Swift, Sabrina has created a dedicated fanbase who love her sound.
Leah Angilly, a Senior from Virginia Beach, Va., was a fan of Sabrina Carpenter during her early days.
“I don’t listen to her as much now, but I did when she was on Disney channel,” she said. “I love the song ‘You Can’t Blame A Girl For Trying.”
Chase Livingston, a Senior from Watch Hill, R.I., appreciates the pop music revival.
“I don’t listen to much pop music but at its peak, I think it was a great feel-good genre that you could listen to at all times, and I’m glad to see that it’s starting to make a comeback,” he said.
Senior Betsy Gaudreau has been a fan since Carpenter’s Disney days and “loves seeing how her music has changed over the years.”
“I like how her music career has grown since her Disney days,” she said. “It’s fun to see her as an adult.”
Sabrina Carpenter is taking off because she is bringing back the bubblegum pop of the 2000s that many loved. Her songs are catchy and don’t make you think too hard, a characteristic that is extremely underrated yet an important aspect of successful pop music.
As of May 1, Sabrina Carpenter’s newest single “Espresso” has hit #1 on the US, UK and Global Spotify charts, a great example of how it can take over 10 years of hard work to become an “overnight success.”
