P. Claire Dodson
·4 min read
Composite. Photos by Nina Westervelt/Billboard via Getty Images
As the 2024 Gov Ball festival in New York City reached its midday peak, I found myself next to the front-stage speakers, 10 or 20 feet away from Sabrina Carpenter. Thousands of people screaming behind me, the flood of cameras, the phones capturing every move. And Carpenter was a pop star out of a movie: shiny and effortless, sly and sultry, playful and risqué, fully present in the moment. In the crowd, we were rapt as she told us to scream “I’m a slu*t!” — twice, “with some gumption” — and we complied.
Three years ago, I shared a Napoleon cake slice in Williamsburg with Carpenter as we discussed her forthcoming album era, emails i can’t send. She was spending a summer in New York with her friends making music she loved, and there was that pent-up exuberant feeling lingering from the most isolated pandemic days of the past winter. In a Topanga from Boy Meets World t-shirt, she was giddy, grinning, game to talk about the Disney days that shaped her, the controversies she was involved in at the time, and the future she imagined for herself as an artist.
We talked about her 10-year-old self, the girl who was releasing music without necessarily knowing what she was doing or who she’d become. “What would I tell myself [at that age]? That I really do get to grow up and do what I always wanted to do,” she told me then. “And that people listen. And that not giving up was a good choice.” She had more agency over her art than ever before, and she couldn’t wait for what was about to happen.
This past weekend, I watched at Gov Ball as she commanded the Verizon main stage and showed everyone who hadn’t seen her charm a room at various New York club shows, or open for Taylor Swift, that she was a main pop girl here to stay.
I didn’t get to see Chappell Roan’s Gov Ball set (or the iconic Lady Liberty drag!) on Sunday, but watching the crowds online, the sheer volume of fans screaming “Femininomenon” at the top of their lungs provoked a similar type of feeling. Not long after I interviewed Carpenter, my sister sent me Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” and I played it 67 times in a row, sent to at least 10 friends. Within the same six months, I watched both Roan and Carpenter sell out Webster Hall and create some of the most fun and euphoric concert vibes I’ve ever experienced, and interviewed them about their vision for the future. Neither artist will play that venue for at least five years, and maybe never again — the move from club to auditorium to arena is coming so fast it’s already upon us. It was so clear at Gov Ball they’d both already outgrown their late afternoon time slots.
Kelsey Weekman reported for Yahoo a couple months ago about the link between the two artists: “Both Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter's fame came slowly, then all at once.” Two perfectly imperfect stories, each artist with their own trials and narrative arcs — Roan the Missourian who moved to L.A. and embraced her queerness through drag and pop music, Carpenter the Disney starlet who could have never broken out, who so many people wrote off. Both have owned their respective narratives and used them to move forward; you don’t have to forget where they came from, it’s a major part of why you love them.
There are so many factors involved in who gets famous, who gets appreciation and money for their work, and who gets to grow and shift as an artist — but there’s a special satisfaction in watching a musician change over time and become this fully embodied version of themselves on stage. I feel it with Carpenter and Roan, but also with stars like Tinashe and Victoria Monét, all the girls we’ve been watching work for years if we were lucky fans, now shining in their respective spotlights. Every iteration of themselves before now was crucial to the plot (go listen to “Sue Me”!), laying the groundwork for what they’d go on to make. Something great was always on the horizon, and now we get to see them glow.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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