Sabrina Carpenter’s first headline London show sold out in minutes and there wasn’t a chance that anyone in Hammersmith could have missed the fact that she was playing at the Apollo on Monday. Queues of young women dressed head-to-toe in pink, glitter, bows and cowboy hats snaked well down the street and into local neighbourhoods.
After the success on social media of her North American tour in recent months, the crowd seemed so excited that they weren’t even phased by the queues. Carpenter knew exactly what she was doing with her pre-show playlist. She hyped everyone up with high energy tunes and then brought out their heartbroken screams with Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) [From the Vault]’ and there wasn’t a single person in that room who didn’t know all the words. The show was supported by Annika Bennett who gave an impressive performance and definitely someone worth watching for years to come. One particularly notable song was ‘Annabelle’, which tells the story of realising maybe she was more than friends with this girl, and one that I immediately added to my liked songs.
The set opened with the American singer on the piano playing the titular ‘emails I can’t send’ at the top of the Juliet’s Balcony style segment of her set, which was really appreciated as someone sat in the circle. The whole set was really well designed, complete with a catwalk, balcony, and the iconic heart-shaped mirror. It can be difficult to fill a whole room if you’re performing by yourself, so the varied levels and constant movement meant her presence took up the entire stage, not to mention making her a little easier to see!
She then transitioned into the more upbeat ‘Read your Mind’ before welcoming everyone in a London accent, something she took every opportunity to do throughout the show. Carpenter explained she likes her shows to start with the heavier songs to break us all before slowly building it all back up again. With that, she twirled away into what she called the “yeehaw section” with ‘Feather’ and ‘Vicious’.
Something notable about Carpenter’s performance is how effortless she makes it all look. She looks very natural like she’s twirling and spinning around with just a couple of friends instead of with the eyes of over 3000 people on her. She moved through some of her most popular songs like ‘Bad for Business’ before pausing for a while to tell the story behind ‘Tornado Warnings’. She joined her band on the guitar for that song and it stood out as one of her best songs from the set with its haunting backstory.
After a few more high-energy, high-emotion songs, she took a little break to talk to the crowd. We heard a dramatic story from May in the front row before Carpenter introduced that evening’s surprise song cover, Lily Allen’s ‘Smile’, giving her a few more chances to test out her British accent.
Another impressive performance came from ‘Fast Times’ which had her dancing across the stage and enough hair flips that she surely must have been dizzy. She has definitely managed to break away from her earlier image as a Disney star and has instead established herself as a rising popstar. I was amazed at how long she could dance in heeled boots and how it was all perfectly choreographed even down to the dancing silhouettes on the curtains behind her. It genuinely looked like she was having so much fun up on the stage and that energy radiated to the crowd, who all had smiles ear to ear.
As the set drew to a close she played fan-favourite ‘Sue Me’ before moving to sit on the front of the stage for a more sombre rendition of ‘decode’. Throughout the show, Carpenter made a consistent effort to connect with the audience and this song was no exception. She opened up about her own experiences as an overthinker and the significance of this song for her own healing.
As the song finished, she thanked the crowd and promised she’d be back in London soon. She was indeed back very soon for a two song encore. First, she sang ‘Nonsense’, which has gone viral for her different outros every night and London was no different, getting its own outro featuring classic London symbols. Carpenter then ended her show with the iconic ‘because I liked a boy’, the song that catapulted her into a lot of social media attention last year.
Carpenter united a crowd through her heartbreak anthems and flirty dance moves which were definitely welcomed in Hammersmith, and I for one look forward to her return.
Words by Ella Gilbert
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