Sabrina Carpenter kicked off her Short n’ Sweet Tour on September 23 in Columbus, Ohio, bringing out a dazzling array of outfits and an impressive mix of songs from her last two albums, Short n’ Sweet and 2022’s emails i can’t send. The show is 21 songs long, starting with “Taste” and ending with “Espresso.”
Carpenter got a lot of attention for her original “Nonsense” outros, which she performed throughout her time opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour. Fans at her first Short n’ Sweet Tour show noted that Carpenter found a creative way to get out of writing more new outros for “Nonsense.”
Below, see how Carpenter handled “Nonsense,” her full setlist, and why she didn’t sing any songs from her four other albums.
Carpenter’s full setlist:
- “Taste”
- “Good Graces”
- “Slim Pickins”
- “Tornado Warnings”
- “Lie to Girls”
- “decode”
- “Bed Chem”
- “Feather”
- “Fast Times”
- “Read your Mind”
- “Sharpest Tool”
- “opposite”
- “because i liked a boy”
- “Coincidence”
- Surprise Cover Song (for the first show, it was ABBA’s “Mamma Mia”)
- “Nonsense”
- “Dumb & Poetic”
- “Juno”
- “Please Please Please”
- “Don’t Smile”
- Encore: “Espresso”
What’s going on with Carpenter’s famous “Nonsense” outros?
Fans noted that Carpenter designed her show so that when she does sing “Nonsense,” she doesn’t need to do an outro. Instead, her mic suddenly cuts off at the end of the song, and she is lowered from the stage in a surprise twist. A screen above reads, “We apologize for the interruption of our program due to technical difficulties.”
Footage surfaced on X, formerly known as Twitter, of how “Nonsense” ended during her first concert.
Why didn’t Carpenter include any songs from her other four albums?
Short n’ Sweet is Carpenter’s sixth album, but her tour only pulls songs from her two most recent LPs. That might be because of Carpenter’s own feelings about her earlier music.
Carpenter spoke to Variety in early August about how she doesn’t feel as connected to her work prior to emails i can’t send, which she released in July 2022.
“For the people who love those early records and listen to them, I love you for that,” she said. “But I personally feel a sense of separation from them, largely due to the shift in who I am as a person and as an artist, pre-pandemic and post-pandemic.”
She called her last two albums, Short n’ Sweet and emails i can’t send, her first two adult ones. Short n’ Sweet is “my second ‘big girl’ album; it’s a companion but it’s not the same [as emails i can’t send],” she said. “When it comes to having full creative control and being a full-fledged adult, I would consider this a sophomore album.”
