They say it takes 10 years to become an overnight success – and the remarkable rise of Sabrina Carpenter proves whoever ‘they’ are knew what they were talking about.
The 25-year-old Espresso singer – who was the sole opening act when Taylor Swift brought The Eras Tour to Australia – started out posting videos of herself singing Christina Aguilera and Adele songs to YouTube when she was nine years old.
What followed was a stint on Disney Channel‘s Girl Meets World, appearances in various films including Netflix‘s Tall Girl series, and now, 15 years after starting out in showbusiness, she’s the first artist to spend five weeks with three hits in the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
Watch the video above.
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Carpenter’s recent – and dramatic – ascent to pop It Girl is something the smalltown-Pennsylvania-born-and-raised girl singing her heart out on the internet could only dream of.
But a decade in the industry – with many of those years spent as a child star – has also given Carpenter some perspective.
“Full transparency: I’ve never really been on charts until quite recently, so it’s a newfound, like … I’m interested. It’s not the reason I write music and it’s not the reason I’ll ever write music,” Carpenter told The Guardian in August. “It’s like the sprinkles on top of the sundae.”
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Carpenter’s chart-dominating album Short n’ Sweet – released one month before she kicked off her world tour after singles Espresso and Please Please Please went bonkers – is her sixth. But it’s the first time the public has truly embraced her to this level.
Her fifth album, Emails I Can’t Send, was released in 2022 – and while it did end up gaining popularity in hindsight when Carpenter performed hits including Nonsense and Feather while touring with Swift, it wasn’t the reason she was in the zeitgeist at that time.
No, Carpenter had unwittingly become a household name a year earlier thanks to a love triangle between her and fellow Disney alumni Joshua Bassett and Olivia Rodrigo.
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The one topic journalists are instructed not to ask Sabrina Carpenter about
It’s a scandal The Guardian‘s Shaad D’Souza says they were instructed not to ask about when they spoke earlier this year, and one that’s played out purely in song lyrics (and it’s not the only love triangle Carpenter’s allegedly been involved with that has been sung about).
“It’s not what I signed up for, but I can’t really help when I was born,” Carpenter told D’Souza about growing up and trying to have a private life in the age of social media and curious fans.
“I want to be honest – I want to just write about what’s happening in my life as a 25-year-old girl. But it comes with the territory and I just have to be like… OK!”
What allegedly happened is this: Rodrigo, now 21, met Bassett, now 23, on the set of their Disney show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which premiered in 2019.
Like their Troy and Gabriella ancestors Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, the then teenage co-stars struck up a romance, which fizzled. Bassett, as the story goes, quickly moved on with Carpenter, though by the time Rodrigo released her scathing single drivers license in 2021, Bassett and Carpenter had already broken up.
“And you’re probably with that blonde girl / Who always made me doubt / She’s so much older than me / She’s everything I’m insecure about,” Rodrigo croons in the hit that launched her to household name status across the globe.
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The Vicious singer is, of course, blonde, and three years older than Rodrigo.
Carpenter, Rodrigo and Bassett have never overtly addressed the rumours, though Bassett released the single Lie, Lie, Lie one week after drivers license.
“I wrote Lie, Lie, Lie after I found out a friend had been lying about me behind my back for a long time,” Bassett, who later revealed the backlash and immense stress from the fallout saw him go to hospital for heart failure and undergo surgery, wrote on his Instagram Story at the time.
“It happens to all of us, and I think all you can do is seek out people that build you up rather than tear you down,” he wrote.
Carpenter then released Skin a week later, in which she sings, “Maybe we could’ve been friends / If I met you in another life,” and “Don’t drive yourself insane,” seemingly in reference to drivers license‘s title.
As Rodrigo climbed to the top of the charts with each single she released in heartbreak-themed SOUR – traitor, anyone? – it was Carpenter and Bassett who fans dragged down through the mud on social media. Then came Taylor Swift.
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How the singers Sabrina Carpenter idolised growing up became enamoured with her in turn
There are three sides to every Hollywood story – one star’s, another star’s, and what fans decide is the truth.
No one else was in the room when Swift’s team was deciding who, exactly, should accompany her on her blockbuster 21-month-long tour around the globe.
What we will say is this: Rodrigo initially had been somewhat of a protégé of Swift’s when SOUR was first released. Then, she was forced to give Swift and Jack Antonoff (as well as Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Josh Farro, plus St. Vincent) writing credits on select songs due to copyright concerns, and Rodrigo and Swift’s relationship notably began to, excuse the pun, sour.
Whether or not that was a factor in Swift’s choice of Carpenter as one of her opening acts is unknown, though one of Carpenter’s songs on her The Eras Tour setlist was 2022’s because i liked a boy, which many theorise is about the fallout of the Rodrigo-Bassett-Carpenter controversy.
For months, every night – except, notably, on the first night of the Sydney leg due to severe weather – Carpenter sang on the biggest stage in the world: “Now I’m a homewrecker, I’m a slut / I got death threats filling up semi trucks / Tell me who I am, guess I don’t have a choice / All because I liked- / I’m the hot topic on your tongue, I’m a rebound gettin’ ’round stealin’ from the young / Tell me who I am, guess I don’t have a choice / All I because I liked a boy.”
Carpenter, who is understood to be dating Oscar-nominated actor Barry Keoghan, very much was taken under Swift’s wing during this period.
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In addition to being pulled up onto the stage by Swift during her first Sydney concert for a duet of White Horse – a song that a young Carpenter, who notably tried and failed to enter a karaoke contest to meet Swift in 2009 and once tweeted in 2010, “The Taylor Swift concert was amazing, had so much fun I cant wait to have a world tour someday like hers! lol with 2 sold out shows!!!!!” – Carpenter also worked with long-time Swift collaborator Antonoff on smash album Short n’ Sweet.
“I just adore Sabrina,” the three-time Producer of the Year Grammy winner told W Magazine. “And she’s going to be around forever because she’s such a great songwriter.”
It’s unclear how much stock should be put into Carpenter being hired as Swift’s opening act after both women were involved in high-profile alleged feuds with Rodrigo – Carpenter, after all, ended up working with Swift nemesis Kim Kardashian on a Skims campaign while on tour with Swift, so is it really that serious?
”In that scenario, I’ve been very, very communicative with [Swift] about that situation, and I just love her so much and support her till the end,” Carpenter told Rolling Stone in June of working with Kardashian on the advertising campaign, with Swift’s blessing.
“So it was no weirdness for me, but I know people will just say things because that’s all they have time to do.”
In September, just before she embarked on her Short n’ Sweet tour, Carpenter worked with another singer she idolised growing up – Aguilera.
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She went from covering Aguilera’s songs on YouTube to singing one with the multi-hyphenate, duetting What a Girl Wants with Aguilera for a special re-release of her hit on its 25th anniversary.
Even Adele has commented on Carpenter’s success, admitting to fans on stage that she “found [herself] singing” the Espresso lyrics “I’m working late, cause I’m a singer” at times.
Adele added: “That Sabrina Carpenter song – that song is my jam!”
Truer words were never spoken.
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