My Sabrina Carpenter Problem

Being an independent musician is odd, to say the least.

It's a plethora of first-world problems.

You have to be a songwriter, performer, co-producer, publicist, art director, branding consultant, promoter, and manager all at once.

Right now, I have nine great songs ready to go.

They sound fantastic, and I know people are going to love them.

Together, they form a cohesive album that tells the story of who I've been over the past few years.

The challenge now is figuring out how to package it up and get people to listen.

This part comes far less naturally to me.

The best in the business know how to distill their identity into its purest, most concentrated form and communicate it to those who will resonate with it.

I've been pretty struck this summer by the unstoppable rise of Sabrina Carpenter.

She's this year's global pop obsession.

A former Disney Channel kid, she feels sculpted by a thousand razor-sharp blades into the perfect commercial machine.

She dresses like some sort of nubile sex kitten, has bleached blonde hair, a Hollywood smile, and a kind of Audrey Hepburn/Holly Golightly personality that's charming, carefree, innocent, and completely devastating.

Her songs are written to absolute perfection—they enter your brain and never leave.

Her lyrics are full of innuendo and funny, evocative imagery, while also being vulnerable and human.

She publicly dates a movie star as if she already has the breakup album in mind.

She represents everything a teenage girl thinks she would like to be, and there's no doubt she's the secret thirst-trap of every man with a smartphone.

She's like the pop version of Frankenstein's monster, had Victor Frankenstein been any good at reassembling corpses.

She represents marketing at its absolute finest.

Now, I'm obviously working with a fraction of a miniscule fraction when it comes to budget and raw materials. My obstacles are as follows:

• I'm a man in his mid-thirties with little-to-no dress sense and (I often now notice) a thinning hairline.
• I write my own wordy songs in an unfashionable genre.
• I've never even been on the Disney Channel.

But somehow, I need to find the essence of what all of this means and translate it into something visual that captures and conveys it.

I feel like I probably need a little help.

I'll keep you up to date—and I'd really love to hear your thoughts, especially if you have any experience or advice to offer.

Until then...

Keep dreaming,

Rob