The Rise of Sabrina Carpenter

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Chapters:
00:00 - The It Girl
01:28 - The Disney Pipeline
03:18 - The Love Triangle
04:48 - Sabrina
07:25 - Conclusion

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Every generation has an ingenue. A young woman who is considered endearingly innocent, beautiful kind gentle sweet pure and harmless girl, similar to the girl-next-door stereotype. Every generation has a sex symbol, and she is often the same person who was once the ingenue. Every generation has a main pop girl, a fashion icon, a trendsetter, a rule-breaker. And sometimes one person fills all of these roles, becoming the it-girl.

The term was coined in the 1920s following the rise of Clara Bow, who was considered sexy enough to be appealing to men, but not so provocative that she was controversial. Innocent enough to be endearing, but fiery enough to be interesting, without pushing the social boundaries of the time too far that it made people uncomfortable. She ticked basically every box that people were looking for in a celebrity. The it girl sets what is cool for an entire generation of girls. Throughout history, this position has been filled by a range of women, from Marilyn Monroe to Princess Diana.

In more recent times, the role of the it girl has typically been filled by a popstar. Since the days of Madonna, popstars are probably the biggest influencers of female fashion, and since the days of Britney, popstars have become massive commercial brands, influencing young girls and women in a variety of ways. And so, every generation is looking for the next it girl. My question, is could it be Sabrina Carpenter.

Obviously its far too premature to really know this. Although Sabrina has been in the public eye for a long time, her music career only really took off with the release of emails I can’t send in 2022. And her potential to be the next it girl I think only started this summer. But there are several reasons to think she might be.

Firstly, the path for it was set long before her. Sabrina is a Disney kid. For the last 30 years, Disney Channel has continually acted like a popstar factory, producing the new interesting female popstar every few years. In fact, in the early 2010s, they had almost a monopoly in that. The industry was dominated by former child actresses. Disney obviously attempted this pipeline with Sabrina, signing her to their label Hollywood Records. With them, she released 4 studio albums between 2015 and 2019, but they were not very successful, peaking at 43, 28, 103 and 138 respectively on the Billboard 200.

So although the Disney star to popstar pipeline didn’t immediately work for Sabrina, she had built a core loyal fanbase which helped support her first post-Hollywood records album, emails I can’t send. This peaked at 23, so still not a smash success but her most successful so far. And I don’t think the peak chart position really reflects the cultural success of this album. Although I don’t think Sabrina could’ve been considered a main-pop girl from it, the album did receive a lot of attention and support, leading to massively viewed music videos, millions of streams and critical praise. While the Disney impact wasn’t immediately felt, I do think the loyal audience she had from her Disney days helped to support the initial success of emails I can’t send, which was a slow-burner and became increasingly popular with the general public.

Of course, the major way that Disney impacted this era of her music career was the love triangle with fellow Disney stars, Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett. I’m sure you all remember so I won’t go into it in depth, but to recap, Olivia Rodrigo shot to global fame with her 2021 album Sour, detailing her breakup with a boy and mentioning his new blonde girlfriend. Fans quickly picked up that she was referring to Joshua Bassett and Sabrina Carpenter, leading to massive amounts of hate being directed at both of them, and Sabrina was unfairly labelled as essentially a homewrecker. Sabrina responded the following year, namely with the song because I liked a boy.

Obviously this was an incredibly unfair and difficult time for Sabrina personally, and most people quickly came to the realisation that she was owed an apology, however from a PR point-of-view, it did help her. In some ways, it made her a victim. And not even of Olivia, but of the rabid fans who attacked her. And when you become seen as a victim in the eyes of the public, you’re now the vulnerable underdog and people find that endearing and wanna root for you. And thankfully, most people recognized that the villain in this situation was the public, so Olivia and Sabrina both went on to have successful careers.
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