Sabrina Carpenter Secures Pop Superstardom as ‘Short N’ Sweet’ Goes Number One
Travis Scott’s Days Before Rodeo hit Number 2, a decade after he first released the mixtape
Sabrina Carpenter performs at Outside Lands in San Francisco on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024. Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
Sabrina Carpenter‘s sixth album, Short n’ Sweet, debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 albums chart, the publication confirmed on Tuesday, a career-defining moment and the summit of a years-long climb to pop superstardom for the young singer.
Carpenter, alongside fellow Island Records signee Chappell Roan, is one of the de facto breakout stories of 2024 and one of the biggest emerging pop acts to break through since Olivia Rodrigo. Short n’ Sweet debuted with 362,000 units, a 20 times increase from her previous album, 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, which opened with 18,000 units at Number 23 on the Billboard chart. Short n’ Sweet garnered 233 million first-week streams, the top streaming album of the week, per Billboard.
Carpenter’s star has significantly ascended since she opened for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour. In April, her breakout single “Espresso” became one of the biggest songs of the year, followed by “Please Please Please,” which became her first Number One on the Hot 100. Both of those songs are strong contenders for this year’s song of the summer. Her latest single, “Taste,” has a strong chance of landing in the Top 5 on the Hot 100 later this week.
Carpenter very narrowly beat out Travis Scott for Number One this week, and the album chart crown announcement was delayed from Sunday until today. The rapper had an impressive opening for the official streaming debut of his beloved 2014 mixtape Days Before Rodeo, which put Scott on the map as one of the biggest rappers of his generation.
Days Before Rodeo opened with 361,000 units, Billboard said, meaning that Sabrina took the number one spot by just 1,000 units. Of those 361,000, an overwhelming 331,000 came from sales. Scott offered several different digital versions of the album at $5 per version, bolstering Days Before Rodeo’s numbers. Billboard notes that 300,000 of the sales came from digital downloads.
Years removed from the fatal crowd rush at the Astroworld Festival in Houston in 2021, Scott’s star power remains as Utopia was also one of the biggest albums of 2023, and he continues to put up strong touring numbers.
From Rolling Stone US.
