Sabrina Carpenter’s four-song set at her Grand Ole Opry debut included the words or phrases “motherfucker,” “well, fuck,” and “fuck my life,” but fans at the 100-year-old country-music radio show didn’t have to clutch their pearls. As Carpenter admitted, they were getting the Opry edits.
“You’re so wholesome here in Nashville,” she said during her sold-out set. “That’s why I’m doing all the clean versions.”
But those mostly PG versions of the pop star’s hits like “Please Please Please,” “Go-Go Juice,” and “Manchild” still cut like a knife. Carpenter, eye-catching in a glittery fringe dress, couldn’t help but exude a certain edginess onstage at the Opry House, even if the 26-year-old left out some of her favorite swear words. At times, she walked right up to the line, teasing those F bombs with a coy glance before changing the line to something family-friendly, like “the others” in “Please Please Please.”
For her performance of “Slim Pickins,” however, off last year’s Short n’ Sweet, she went all in, delivering the line “all the douchebags in my phone” with gusto. Carpenter now surely holds the distinction of being the only artist to ever sing the word “douchebag” in the Opry circle.
Introduced by Sheryl Crow, Carpenter was clearly thrilled to be on country music’s most famous stage. She talked at length about listening to Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton growing up in Pennsylvania, where she often encountered cows in the middle of the road, and nodded to the country influences on her latest album, Man’s Best Friend. It was a record, she said, put together with “a pedal steel, a banjo, and a dream.”
Carpenter’s appearance at the Opry is part of the institution’s Opry 100 campaign, a centennial celebration that has booked artists like Ringo Starr, James Taylor, and Shinedown alongside Opry regulars like Vince Gill, Pam Tillis, and Riders in the Sky. Carpenter’s show also included performances by Marcus King with Jamey Johnson, Ernest, and Kaitlin Butts.
