The holiday season to me is about family, friends, cookies, gift-giving, and heartwarming moments. Every year I try to watch at least 3 Christmas movies each week in the month of December. I like to snuggle up on the couch with a warm fuzzy blanket and a large mug of hot chocolate. A good Christmas movie has heart-warming stories and the lesson of the true meaning of Christmas.
If you have been watching a lot of Netflix recently, you will have noticed that they have a lot of TV specials with musical artists. A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter recently dropped as a Christmas special. Before watching this, I expected a cute documented Christmas concert with one of my favorite artists. I was very mistaken.
I know that Sabrina Carpenter has gotten a lot of backlash for her inappropriate outfits at her concerts and her suggestive lyrics in a lot of her songs, but I really never paid too much attention to it or cared that much. However, considering this was a Christmas special, I think she could have toned it down a little bit.
I also found Carpenter and her musical guest’s costumes to be a bit too exposing. This usually does not bother me and I even enjoy the fashionable outfits that musical artists wear, but these outfits were just too much for Christmas. There were some pretty short skirts and low cut tops that were not giving me very Christmassy vibes. Along with that, almost all of her songs contained sexual lyrics, many of which were referring to Santa. This just made me very uncomfortable. Why would you be talking about getting freaky with Santa?
The vocals were also very underwhelming. If you are doing a Christmas special, you better be reaching for Mariah Carrey levels of Christmas vocals. Sabrina Carpenter herself was actually pretty good, but her musical guests could have been chosen better. Carpenter sang “Santa Baby” with musical guest Shaniah Twain. Twain’s singing made me feel like I was getting run over by a reindeer. That’s how bad it was.
Kali Uchis, another musical guest, was also very disappointing. As a fan of Uchis, I was very thrown off by the way she was singing. She sounded like she was trying to sound “sexy”, but they were singing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” which is from the point of view of a child. They slowed down the song way too much and made it sound weird and sensual.
The only thing that I actually enjoyed about this Christmas special was the comedy aspect to it (although I still think it was weird how Carpenter was talking about sleeping with Santa). There were little skits and moments in the songs that I thought were pretty funny. One song ,“What Do I Get My Brother-in-Law”, was written in an SNL type way where it wasn’t really singing and very heavily auto-tuned for humor. I genuinely laughed at this because it seemed so relatable even though I don’t have a brother-in-law. Another clip I loved was when they showed Carpenter asking for cake when she was little. She was so cute and tiny (and she still kind of is).
In essence, this did not give me the jolly vibes or heart-warming Christmas feel I was looking for. I was truly disappointed with the musical aspect of this special, and I really hope they do another special with Sabrina Carpenter so she can get some redemption. Overall, I would not recommend watching this unless you want to feel uncomfortable with a side of mediocre music and adequate comedy.
