PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Back in 2017, when she was among the performers at radio station Q-102's Jingle Ball at Wells Fargo Center, singer Sabrina Carpenter talked in an interview about how much she got back to her native Lehigh Valley.
The singer, then just 18, already had the platinum hit "Thumbs," the gold hit "Why" and the role of Maya Hart in the Disney Channel show “Girl Meets World."
“Honestly, much more than I thought I was going to,” Carpenter, who grew up in Lower Milford Township, said.
“Which is lovely. I love being home; I still have the house that I grew up in, so I love to be able to visit. … I really love to be back."
On Tuesday night, Carpenter was back at Wells Fargo Center, but this time, was headliner in front of a sold-out crowd.
And just as her career has gotten suddenly much broader, so has her definition of "home."
"Well, this is my hometown show," she told the audience. "I think I played my first official show in Philadelphia when I was 16."
These days, it's anyone's guess how much Carpenter, now 25, gets back to the Lehigh Valley — if at all. Her publicists said her schedule didn't allow for an interview.
That's understandable. Since last year, Carpenter's rise has been meteoric.
Her single "Espresso" has sold triple platinum, and the follow-up "Please Please Please" double platinum.
Her most recent single, "Taste," peaked at No. 2 while the others still were atop the chart — making Carpenter the only act other than The Beatles to have three Top 5 hits in the same week.
The songs are spending their fifth consecutive week in the Top 10, making her the first woman in the chart’s 66-year history to achieve that feat.
The album on which those songs appear, "Short n' Sweet," released in August, has hit platinum, and this week rebounded to No. 1 with the start of her tour to promote it.
A focus on recent success
Just as Carpenter's career boom has redefined her home, it also refocused her performance.
Her 21-song, hour-and-26-minute show on Tuesday was made up exclusively of songs from "Short n' Sweet" and her previous album, 2022's "Emails I Can't Send."
It opened with "Taste," perhaps her best song, and introduced the crowd to the night's theme: that Carpenter was inviting them into her "home" (the stage included a bedroom, stairways and a balcony).
The presentation seemed to fit Carpenter — she is, after all, also an actress, and she played exceptionally well to the cameras that showed the concert on the arena's large screens.
The truncated set list still let her show her range — her lessor recent hit "Good Graces" displayed her voice, which is better than most young female singers, and "Slim Pickins" showed a country side on which she hit high Dolly Parton notes.
For "Lie to Girls," she even strapped on an acoustic guitar. She switched her platinum, No. 1 hit "Feather," to a jazz arrangement (and did it pretty well).
And "Bed Chem" showed Carpenter's sexiest side, as it included her going into her bed behind a backlit sheet that silhouetted a brief encounter with a male.
The arena's large screens warned the audience — nearly exclusively female — in advance that parental discretion was advised.
She also sang some very high notes.
Her big break
Carpenter's set list and description of her hometown left behind not only a list of earlier hit songs, but her long history in the Lehigh Valley.
“I just remember trying to start my career there … by singing for as many people as I could,” Carpenter said in a 2017 interview.
She remembered, as a child, singing “Happy Birthday” at the Limeport Inn to anybody who asked, and winning a singing contest held by the American Lung Association at Nazareth Area High School when she was 11.
Her biggest break came in 2009 when she was 10 and she placed third place out of 100,000 entrants in an online singing competition on Miley Cyrus’ website.
Her entry was a video of Cyrus’ “Hoedown Throwdown" that was shot, in part, at the former Montana West club and restaurant in Richland Township, Bucks County.
After the contest, Carpenter began posting YouTube videos of her singing Taylor Swift, Ozzy Osbourne and Etta James.
She also broke into acting. In 2010, when she played a crime victim on “Law & Order: SVU,” and caught the eye of the Disney Channel. She appeared there as a dancer on “Just Dance Kids 2” and on an episode of Disney’s “Austin & Ally.”
She did voice work on the animated preschool series “Sofia the First” and her song “Smile” aired on Radio Disney and was included on the “Sofia the First” soundtrack.
She also in 2014 won a role on the Disney show "Girl Meets World," playing Maya Hart, best friend of the main character. (She also sang the show's theme, "Take on the World").
At an appearance in Quakertown in 2014 to sign autographs and meet fans, more than 800 fans showed up, and some were turned away after waiting hours in line.
Leaving the Lehigh Valley
By 12, Carpenter was signed to Hollywood Records and in 2015 released her debut album, "Eyes Wide Open."
That year, Carpenter also met with finalists competing in Community Canvas at PBS39 Studios in Bethlehem — part of a prize package awarded to the children.
She had even bigger success with her sophomore album, 2016's "Evolution," which peaked in the Top 30 and gave her the platinum hit "Thumbs."
She later also had the gold hits, "Why," "Sue Me" and "Skin' — none of which she sang Tuesday because of her focus on her new albums.
Carpenter's last public performance in the Lehigh Valley was as a headliner for Musikfest in 2016, where she drew 4,015 people.
@musikfest_pa Put a finger down if @Sabrina Carpenter just said your name…😱😱 #musikfest #sabrinacarpenter #bethlehem #hotones ♬ original sound - Musikfest
(She participated in a meet-and-greet for radio station B104 at Blue Mountain Resort in 2017, but didn't perform).
She was the first Lehigh Valley native to headline Musikfest.
"Girl Meets World" was canceled that same year, and by then she was living full time in Los Angeles.
In an interview before the Musikfest show, Carpenter said she grew up on the festival, and said she was looking forward to eating Aw Shucks corn.
“When I was growing up, we went to Musikfest every year and I have vivid memories," she said at the time. “I always wanted to perform there. This is really special to me.
“Because this is my hometown it is a special show."
Comparisons with Taylor Swift
It's hard to avoid comparing Carpenter with Taylor Swift, whose dominance of popular music Carpenter is challenging.
Not only are the two music contemporaries, but they grew up just 50 miles apart — Swift's hometown of Wyomissing is in Berks County.
And there were elements of Carpenter's show that coincided with Swift's.
That was especially true of the song "Coincidence," which came later in the show and was sung at the end of the runway that extended into the crowd, with Carpenter joined by 10 dancers and singers.
It also was true of "Dumb and Poetic," which, like much of Swift's catalog, is directed at a former paramour, with the lines, "You're so/Dumb and poetic/It's just what I fall for/I like the aesthetic."
But there was more that set them apart.
For one, Carpenter literally performed the entire show in lingerie — something it's hard to imagine Swift doing.
And, truth be told, Carpenter is not only a better performer, but a better singer.
After singing a very good version of her song "Juno" atop a platform that rose high in the air, Carpenter closed the main set with her recent No. 1, double-platinum hit "Please Please Please" and the lessor hit "Don't Smile," on which she hit some very strong notes.
For her encore, Carpenter did a strong, five-minute version of her biggest hit, the three-times-platinum "Espresso."
And to sing it, she came out on stage in a Phillies shirt.
It was a hometown show, after all.
