SABRINA CARPENTER: BREAKING FROM THE BOTTOM UP

When Justin Eshak and Imran Majid took the reins of Island Records in the summer of 2021, there weren’t all that many artists on the roster, much less actively in the studio. Onetime Disney Channel star Sabrina Carpenter ticked both those boxes, and by the time Eshak and Majid began hearing some of the music that would eventually appear on her 2022 album, Emails I Can’t Send, their ears pricked up very quickly.

“It reinforced our belief that we were on the right path, even if she wasn’t huge at the time,” Eshak says. “We could see that she had a real point of view. She’s extremely knowledgeable about music, which is not always the case with artists who start their careers in film or TV. I thought it was quite unique.”

Cut to the summer of 2024 and Carpenter is a full-on pop superstar on the eve of the release of her latest album, Short n’ Sweet, which features the global smash hits “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.” Hers is a true artist-development success story, powered by longstanding collaborative relationships within the Island and UMG systems and ever-growing synergy between the label and Janelle Lopez Genzink’s Volara Management, which has represented Carpenter since 2021.

“They’ve been such great partners,” Eshak says of Volara, whose Merce Jessor and Amy Davidson run point on day-to-day logistics. Island VP of A&R Jackie Winkler, who signed Carpenter to the label, “has done an incredible job A&Ring her records,” he adds, also shouting out former Island GM/current REPUBLIC CORPS EVP of Global Marketing Mike Alexander, Head of Commercial Strategy Marshall Nolan, VP of Marketing/Creative Strategy Natasha Kilibarda and Island’s digital team for their devotion to growing Carpenter’s career.

Island has also enjoyed strong support from Republic heads Monte and Avery Lipman, REPUBLIC CORPS President/COO Jim Roppo and EVP Gary Spangler, who've helped turbocharge Carpenter’s eye-popping numbers at radio.

Indeed, airplay and streaming stats help tell the story, the next chapter of which will be written once Carpenter begins her AEG-promoted arena world tour 9/23 in Columbus, Ohio. At Spotify, “Espresso” is closing in on 1 billion global streams since its April release, while “Please Please Please” is at 583m and the Emails hit “Nonsense” is at 939m. Add in the deluxe Emails single “Feather,” her first #1 at Top 40, and Carpenter has accrued more than 1.1b streams from those four songs alone in the U.S. this year.

After hearing Short n’ Sweet in progress during 2024's Grammy week, Majid recalls phoning UMG head Sir Lucian Grainge and enthusing, “Sabrina is delivering that generational album—the wittiness, the cleverness, the lyrics, the production, the sophistication, the sexiness of it, the storytelling. She's a proper songwriter. This isn’t a bunch of pitched songs. This is her.”

Before all the fanfare, Carpenter, who's booked by CAA’s Mario Tirado and Marlene Tsuchii, toured clubs behind Emails and built up her audience one listener at a time. During a fall 2022 show at New York’s Webster Hall, Eshak recalls noticing that “it wasn’t a bunch of parents with their kids; it was a very Gen Z/NYU crowd, and that was fascinating." "Usually," he continues, "artists like this break from TV or radio, with big, top-down looks. She was from that world, but she broke from the bottom up by touring, connecting with her fans and growing her community.”

Opening for close friend Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, as Carpenter did throughout 2023 and this year, didn’t hurt either. “She found a whole other audience and awareness when that happened, and it converted,” Eshak says, noting that “Espresso” was released between spring Asian dates with Swift and Carpenter’s Coachella performances. “We were very confident going into ‘Espresso,’ but naturally it exceeded our expectations. It put her in a different stratosphere.”

Majid, Carpenter and Eshak; Winkler and Carpenter

Eshak can’t wait to see how Carpenter’s creative vision translates to the upcoming tour, which was teased in early August with the artist’s first headlining festival set, at Outside Lands in San Francisco. Kacey Musgraves joined Carpenter that night for a surprise duet on Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

“An artist can have streaming and radio success without translating into hard tickets, but this is different,” he says of the Short n’ Sweet trek, which could conservatively gross $10m in merch alone from just the first 30-plus North American dates. “Outside Lands was amazing because you could see how much bigger it had gotten even since she played Coachella. She hasn’t been playing other new songs live yet, so it will be really special to see a show where she’s pulling from the full depth of her catalog.”

Majid has been most excited to see audience reaction to the rest of Short n’ Sweet, which was previewed 8/20 in L.A. for her most active Spotify listeners. “She's really connected with youth culture in a way that not a lot of pop artists are,” he says. “We saw at the Spotify event how much her super-fans could feel it in the lyrics, whether they were funny, serious or sad. That’s what I’m so fired up about.”

Naturally, Eshak, Majid and company can’t resist daydreaming about Grammy love for Carpenter, who has never been nominated before. “I know I’m biased, but I think she deserves recognition,” Eshak says. “Sabrina is someone who can be both popular and important. There aren’t a lot of artists who have that opportunity.

Carpenter and Alexander