Sabrina Carpenter Stops Doing Custom “Nonsense” Outros But Brings Comedy Bits, ABBA Cover To Tour Opener

Former Disney kid Sabrina Carpenter has been making pop music for a solid decade, but this year marks her leap into the realm of real-deal pop stardom. After dropping the big summer hits “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” Carpenter released her pretty-great new album Short N’ Sweet last month. On Monday night, she launched her first-ever headlining arena tour at Columbus’ Nationwide Arena, and her stage set was full of fun little touches. But it did not have one thing that’s become a trademark Carpenter bit: The custom “Nonsense” outro.

Ever since she released her 2022 single “Nonsense,” Sabrina Carpenter has been adding fun little three-line outros to the track, usually hornily referencing the city where she’s performing. Those outros have reliably gone viral, and they’ve probably helped elevate her to pop’s A-list. But either Carpenter couldn’t come up with anything that rhymes with “Columbus” or, more likely, the “Nonsense” outro is simply no longer part of her live show. Last night, she made a comedic bit out of it, with “technical difficulties” signs coming on when the “Nonsense” outro would’ve happened.

Judging by videos from Columbus, Carpenter’s current live show is full of comedy bits. Her stage entrance, for instance, is made to look like an old-timey sitcom intro, with Carpenter not realizing that she’s supposed to perform because she’s in the bath. There’s also some physical comedy where she’s not tall enough to reach the mic that descends from the ceiling. And when the show ends, Carpenter comes up on screen with a pretty funny goodbye message.

Instead of the “Nonsense” outros, Sabrina Carpenter is doing something different to make each show feel special: She’s singing a different cover song, as determined by a game of spin the bottle with her backup dancers. In Columbus, she took on ABBA’s 1975 pop classic “Mamma Mia.”

Before the Columbus show, Sabrina Carpenter also paid tribute to a big pop song from a different generation. For the Spotify Anniversaries video series, Carpenter’s fellow former Disney kid Christina Aguilera revisited her self-titled debut album, which turned 25 last month. Aguilera went back to those songs in a half-hour live-in-studio session that featured a couple of superstar cameos. Machine Gun Kelly played a guitar solo on “Genie In A Bottle” for some reason, and Aguilera sang “What A Girl Wants” as a duet with Carpenter.

Here’s the full video of that Christina Aguilera session:

And here’s the setlist from the Short N’ Sweet Tour opener, via Setlist.fm.

SETLIST:
01 “Taste”
02 “Good Graces”
03 “Slim Pickins”
04 “Tornado Warnings”
05 “Lie To Girls”
06 “Decode”
07 “Bed Chem”
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08 “Feather”
09 “Fast Times”
10 “Read Your Mind”
11 “Sharpest Tool”
12 “Opposite”
13 “Because I Liked A Boy”
14 “Coincidence”
15 “Mamma Mia” (ABBA cover)
16 “Nonsense”
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17 “Dumb & Poetic”
18 “Juno”
19 “Please Please Please”
20 “Don’t Smile”
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21 “Espresso”