How Sabrina Carpenter at Lollapalooza made me change my mind
There are music fans out there who unknowingly ruined one of their most precious experiences.
When Elton John headlined Glastonbury in 2023, rumours ran rife about who he would unveil throughout his show. Not just on the day, but in the weeks leading up to the show, all the discourse surrounding the excitement of what was going to be a seismic event was about who he would bring out to perform with him.
Let’s get this straight: this was one of music’s most iconic artists, stepping foot on hallowed turf to bring his glittering career to a close, and fans were genuinely more concerned about whether Dua Lipa would join him on stage or not. I wondered at which fork in the road we took the wrong turn as a music society and became utterly obsessed with guest appearances.
I realised it was progressive. Music slowly followed suit as every fibre of modern society became fixated on life highlights. We sleptwalked into becoming a dopamine-obsessed music crowd, without the patience to sit through something in its intended entirety, and now we need unwelcome distractions every ten minutes to retain our interest. Rather than the gig being an entire “we were there” moment, it’s become “we were there when”, desperately waiting for a famous face to make your show feel doubly as special.
Of course, it’s not an entirely new concept. It’s just the abuse of it that feels contemporary. As years have gone by, the greats have never been shy about bringing their famous friends on stage and bringing the house down.
But without the advent of smartphones and social media, those moments were never cultivated out of self-indulgence and carefully crafted to feed the marketing machine. They were designed to evoke joy in the wider context of the show’s narrative.
Right now, no artist knows better than Sabrina Carpenter how to feed the sharp teeth of the music marketing animal. She’s carefully crafted a persona that perfectly matches her slick brand of pop. Naturally, my cynicism towards novelty guest appearances averted my attention away from any of her shows when searching for a much-needed antidote. Wrongly, I assumed she would carefully feed into the clickbait-generated dopamine cycle.
But during her performance at this weekend’s Lollapalooza in Chicago, she turned the idea on its head and made me U-turn on my own opinions. Here is an artist, standing at the summit of the pop sphere, with the who’s who of entertainment in her little black book of contacts. With the power of influence at her fingertips, she could have invited someone on stage to help her break the internet.
But instead, she pivoted. Looking out over a sea of fresh-faced fans, brightly lit by the Chicago skyline, Carpenter made a move that connected generations through the city’s rich history. By inviting Earth, Wind, and Fire on stage to perform ‘Let’s Groove Tonight’ and ‘September’, she fulfilled the wishes of her more informed fans while simultaneously educating the uninitiated. All the while, she gave the city in which the festival was held its rightful moment in the sun and allowed the show, for just two brief songs, to be about something bigger than her.
I’m not blind to the fact that Earth, Wind, and Fire are a popular enough name to protect the sanctity of her show, and the introduction of the band to play their biggest hits is still a relatively safe move. But it was in good taste nonetheless. Because of all the involved parties, the biggest beneficiaries of that appearance were the fans.
The euphoric arc of the show’s storyline wasn’t derailed, the important contribution of Earth, Wind, and Fire to contemporary pop was acknowledged, and so the torch of musical authenticity was brightly passed to a future generation.
