Sabrina Carpenter is 26 years old, five-foot-nothing, and horny as hell. “Raise your hand if you were damp earlier,” she ordered the 65,000-strong crowd at Hyde Park’s BST, her blue eyes wide, a reference to the heavy downpour that occurred before she took to the stage, but also a winking innuendo of the kind Carpenter has made her signature. Hers is a kind of camp sexuality, not so much sensuous as stagy and lacquered; a Rayon-babydoll-and-Lucite-mules eroticism.

We saw this from the very start, in the Betamax-style videos that flashed up on the screens prior to Carpenter’s appearance, which showed her as a bouffanted 1970s newsreader (“It’s 10pm,” she announced mock-seriously, “do you know where your girlfriend is?”). These recurred throughout the night, with faux-ads for “Manchild” repeller spray and a “Bed Chem” vibrating love bed. The louche tone was apparent in the stage design, too, an intricate affair of platforms and staircases, as well as the performer’s initial outfit — a rhinestone bodysuit with a collar as sharp as the wings of a Corvette, accessorised with a bedazzled microphone and, later, a matching jewelled tambourine.

It’s this artifice that lies at the heart of Carpenter’s appeal, and a series of contradictions: a sonorous singing voice matched with a deep, cigarette-spiked talking one; a bubblegum stage presence coupled with a wry sense of humour; and a sexiness so in-your-face it becomes tantalisingly unerotic. Perhaps this is why the release of the cover for Carpenter’s new album, Man’s Best Friend, has prompted so much frantic discourse. It shows the singer on her knees, her long hair wrapped around the fist of an unseen man. To my mind, the image lacks the tension of Carpenter’s usual kitsch, aiming instead for the kind of dull, straightforward sexiness we’re used to seeing from pop stars.

Back on stage, Carpenter was all buoyancy and pep, go-go boots skipping across the stage, utterly in control of the audience at all points. Even when she brought out Duran Duran for a surprise performance of “Hungry Like the Wolf”, all eyes were on her.

Her voice was powerful and skilfully controlled, qualities perhaps to be expected from a Disney Channel alum. But it was the emotion she managed to contain within it, rueful and persuasive, that proved to be the real surprise. This was best showcased in her synth-country collaborations with producer Jack Antonoff, such as “Slim Pickins”, during which she did a shot with her guitarist, and the smash-hit “Please, Please, Please”. Her most recent single, “Manchild”, was the highlight, a bombastic country-pop ode to unsuitable exes. The crowd bellowed the chorus before Carpenter and her dancers led them in an impromptu line-dance. It was joyous and silly and, on this scale, spectacular.

If there were any mis-steps, it was that the gig seemed to have been tweaked to become a little more child-friendly — understandable, at an all-ages event whose attendees seemed disproportionately under 16. During fan-favourite “Juno”, the simulated sex positions she usually performs on stage were replaced by tween-safe confetti cannons.

Still, these are just quibbles. When she ran back through the crowd from the cherrypicker where she’d been singing “Don’t Smile” to perform the closer, last year’s inescapable “Espresso”, the screens showed black and white footage of her touching fans’ hands — a neat touch of self-mythologising that suggested she was already a pop star of legend. Based on this performance, it’s hard to disagree.

★★★★★

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