Sabrina CarpenterArtist profile →
Two years ago, Sabrina Carpenter told a Coachella crowd, “See you back here when I headline.” On Friday night (April 10), she did, and she turned the polo grounds into a movie lot. The Hollywood Reporter called the first-night headline set “intricate” and “vintage Hollywood-style,” built around a stage-size “Sabrinawood” sign.
It opened with a black-and-white video in which Sam Elliott played a menacing cop who pulls her over. Carpenter then stepped out of a car beside the stage, walked a catwalk made to look like a walk of fame and started with “House Tour.” Two songs later, “Manchild” arrived with dancers dressed as poodles and Dalmatians. The sign rose as she began “When Did You Get Hot?”
The cameos were the show’s odd glue. Susan Sarandon played an older Carpenter in a long monologue, Will Ferrell appeared as an electrician who joked he thought he was booked for Stagecoach, and Corey Fogelmanis popped up in one of the filmed interludes, according to Consequence and Setlist.fm. Consequence thought the skits “never quite matched the charisma of the live performance itself.”
The songs
It was mostly a Man’s Best Friend night. Consequence heard the album’s live-band warmth carry over, with “Manchild” and “Go Go Juice” in bigger arrangements, plus live debuts of “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night,” “Such a Funny Way” and “Sugar Talking.” “Taste,” “Please Please Please,” “Juno” and “Espresso” kept the hits coming, and “Espresso” had been released two years to the day since her last Coachella set.
Read moreSabrina Carpenter Will Play Ginger Rogers Opposite Tom Holland's Fred Astaire
She closed with “Tears,” seated on a throne that rose from a car while a fountain burst below. Setlist.fm called the ending a surprise next to Justin Bieber’s fireworks finale the next night, and noted that some thought her production was “overdone to the point of being unnecessary,” while Consequence’s verdict was kinder: an enjoyable show, if not as conceptually jaw-dropping as some past headline sets.
The one stumble
Carpenter drew criticism on social media after she asked whether someone was yodeling when a fan let out a zaghrouta, a celebratory vocal trill common in parts of the Middle East and North Africa. On X she wrote, “My apologies, I didn’t see this person with my eyes and couldn’t hear clearly,” and added that her reaction “was pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill intended.”
Why it matters
Carpenter had teased the show as “the most ambitious show I’ve ever done” in a Perfect magazine interview with Marc Jacobs, and said the work started around seven months ago, NME reported. It also set up a contrast: Bieber’s set the next night was close to the opposite, a minimalist show that Rolling Stone called messy. Our weekend-one roundup has the rest of the field. Weekend two followed April 17, with Madonna as a surprise guest, and Carpenter would later open the VMAs with Madonna and Charli xcx.
- Set
- Coachella main stage, Friday, April 10
- Cameos
- Sam Elliott, Susan Sarandon, Will Ferrell, Corey Fogelmanis
- Live debuts
- “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night,” “Such a Funny Way,” “Sugar Talking,” “When Did You Get Hot?”
- Weekend two
- April 17
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
