Tracks 5, 14 and 23 from EVOLution (2016)

Track 9 from Sierra Burgess Is A Loser (Original Netflix Soundtrack (2018)

Tracks 3, 10 and 18 from Singular Act I (2018)

Tracks 5 and 10 from Singular Act II (2019)

Track 17 from Emails I Can't Send Fwd: (2023)

The first Sabrina Carpenter song I heard was the 2016's minor pop radio hit "Thumbs," which I didn't really care for. But I guess I saw her before that on "Girl Meets World," which I watched an episode or two of just to see the old gang from "Boy Meets World" again. Then I got hooked by the Singular Act II single "In My Bed" and really liked that album and Emails I Can't Send, which was the sleeper hit that set Carpenter on her current trajectory after the fifth single, "Nonsense," took off. 

Aesthetically, Carpenter's albums have been all over the place, as if you sometimes couldn't tell if she wanted to be the next Ariana Grande or the next Taylor Swift, but I think at some point she settled on a strong persona that allows her magpie musical sensibility to work for her. Now she's kind of a witty, bawdy blonde bombshell, equal parts Dolly Parton and Samantha Jones from "Sex and the City." I love the goofy fourth wall-breaking moments on some of these songs: "I'm just gonna say it one more time -- for fun!" before the last chorus of "Bad Time" or the amused "that's cool" at the backing vocals on "Good Graces." 

Of course, some of the earlier stuff on this playlist is a little more anonymous and a little more hit-and-miss, but I enjoyed digging through the first couple albums and the many TV and film soundtracks she did in her Disney Channel teen actor/singer era. "Perfect Song" is a very silly song full of song references, culminating in the hilariously bizarre lyric "the baffled king composing, oops I did it again," which I figured should go next to the Leonard Cohen reference on Short 'n Sweet's "Dumb & Poetic." One thing I found when I did my Billboard piece about TV synchs earlier this year was that "Looking At Me" from Singular Act II got a lot of streams after appearing in episodes of "Love Island" and its spinoffs and playlists associated with the show. In fact, "Looking At Me" recently passed "Thumbs" to become Carpenter's most streamed pre-2022 song. 

Julian Bunetta has become one of my favorite underrated writer/producers in the pop world over the last decade or so, with a varied catalog that includes a lot of One Direction and a lot of American pop and country music. He's been involved in some of Sabrina Carpenter's best singles ("Nonsense," "Espresso," and "Taste") so I wanted to highlight some of the album tracks he's done with her, "Bet U Wanna" and "Good Graces" and "Don't Smile." Bunetta doesn't really have a signature sound, you wouldn't necessarily know those songs were produced by the same person, but they're all great.