How Sabrina Carpenter Dream-Come-True’d Her Whole Life

P
ut your arms in and get your chest below the water … just breathe in and out, super slowly.… You’re doing great. Like, damn … we’ve got 20 seconds left. Want to keep going?

I’m in the private suite of a swanky spa in Central London one morning in early March, and one of the world’s biggest pop stars is guiding me through a cold plunge. Across from me, Sabrina Carpenter is shoulders-deep in a cylindrical wooden ice bath of her own, braving four degrees Celsius in a baby-blue lace bikini. When our three minutes are up, the 26-year-old rises out of the frigid water. “We’re done!” she excitedly announces. “Wow. Already you’re like, ‘I’m a new woman.’ ”

As she famously sang in her inescapable hit “Espresso,” Carpenter works late, ’cause she’s a singer — but she’s also an early riser. It’s 9 a.m., the morning after the first of two sold-out shows at the O2 Arena. Several celebrities were in attendance last night, including Harry Styles, Hugh Grant, Janet Jackson (“goated,” Carpenter notes), Spice Girls’ Emma Bunton (this show’s honorary guest for “Juno,” during which Carpenter “arrests” someone in fuzzy pink handcuffs), and James Corden, who brought his children backstage to meet Carpenter.

Though it wasn’t Carpenter’s first time playing the O2 — she opened for British boy band the Vamps there in 2017 and kicked off the Brit Awards just days ago with a sizzling performance that featured the Royal Guard — last night felt like her first official time. Or, as Carpenter simply thought to herself: “I run this bitch tonight.”

You can trace all of this back to last year’s Short n’ Sweet, the cheeky masterpiece that transformed Carpenter from a former Disney child star who made music to a certified pop superstar. She’s the red-hot cultural supernova who mastered the art of humorous heartbreak, transforming her love losses into major wins. Her man might turn out to be a wellness-obsessed drag who “jacks off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen,” and she may find the dating game tough since the Lord neglected to grant her a “gay awakenin.’ ” But Carpenter is not just in on the joke — she’s the one cracking them.

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Plenty of stars can craft catchy, clever love songs with glossy hooks. But Carpenter’s sharp-witted lines are on another level. “She’s as intelligent as someone can possibly be, which is why she’s funny,” says her producer, Jack Antonoff. “When she says something incredibly profound and then chucks it away with a joke, it almost hits deeper. You go back, the Beatles would [have] the most beautiful love song on Earth, and then something that sounds like a cartoon that John or Paul made up in their head. Some of the best songs ever, and these really funny things, live hand in hand. It’s something I’ve personally been yearning for, and I think other people have been, too.” 

Short n’ Sweet earned Carpenter six Grammy nominations (including nods in the “Big Four” categories), and won her two (Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Solo Performance, for “Espresso”). She appeared as a musical guest on SNL last May and has returned to the show twice more, duetting with Paul Simon on “Homeward Bound” to kick off the 50th-anniversary special earlier this year (“He trusted me a lot with that,” she notes, “because I could’ve fucked that up”) and making a cameo during host Quinta Brunson’s monologue in May.

Along the way, Carpenter got to collaborate with another legend — Dolly Parton, who joined Carpenter on “Please Please Please” from the deluxe version of Short n’ Sweet. “It felt like I was looking in a weird mirror into the future,” Carpenter says of her hero, who is also a five-foot-tall blonde with serious pipes. “Our voices are very similar,” Parton tells me. “I can’t tell sometimes which part’s her and which part’s me. And we look like relatives. She looks like she could be my little sister. We’re little women, doing big things.”

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Those things are going to get even bigger this year, when Carpenter releases Man’s Best Friend, the follow-up to Short n’ Sweet. Due August 29, the album includes the new single “Manchild,” a spicy kiss-off to an ex. (Asked which ex it’s about, she replies, “It’s about your dad.”) Like several of the songs on Short n’ Sweet, Carpenter co-wrote it with Antonoff and Amy Allen. “It’s easily my favorite song we’ve ever done together,” says Antonoff. “The things we did on the last album — things that people really loved — were just the start of places we wanted to take it. It’s like, ‘Oh, you like that? Well, just you wait.’ ” 

A child actor who got her start on the Disney spinoff Girl Meets World, Carpenter released her debut album, Eyes Wide Open, in 2015. It’s taken her 10 years, but she always knew her time would come — that the super-trouper lights would find her. “I do feel like the timing wasn’t a coincidence,” she says. “Because I’ve always felt a really weird relationship with the universe, and I always felt like it was going to work out. But I also feel at the same time, ‘How the fuck did that all happen?’ I don’t want to get too cocky. I’ve been here for 10 years, but also 10 minutes.”

When Carpenter first meets me at Rebase, the spa in the chic neighborhood of Marylebone, she’s wearing her own merch: a white tee with a lingerie dress printed on it, the lacy undergarment a quintessential component of the Short n’ Sweet aesthetic. She’s cozied up in a black Aritzia coat, matching black Uggs, and a leopard-print scarf blanketing her blond hair. When I tell her “Espresso” turns a year old in the near future, her eyes widen in disbelief. “That shit’s still on some chart somewhere,” she says of the megahit. It’s not leaving the public consciousness anytime soon, either: Just the other day, Carpenter called for room service at her hotel, asking for a shot of her famed drink. “The woman just started cracking up,” she says. “I was like, ‘How do you know the sound of my voice? Do you know that it’s me? This is so strange!’ ” 

“How the Fuck Did All That Happen?”

Ironically, Carpenter drinks very little coffee, preferring yerba mate. “Tap in,” she tells me. “It’s everything.” The South American herbal tea isn’t present inside the Rebase suite, but the space has every other wellness beverage you can think of, including packets of colostrum, collagen, and electrolytes. A nearby table contains several bottles of liquids in a symmetric pattern, from coconut water to turmeric juice to kombucha. Carpenter holds up the shot of an energy drink, labeled Ketone-IQ. “I thought this said ‘ketamine,’ ” she says. “I was like, whoa!” 

It’s an unusual move these days to release a new album while still touring behind the one before. But Carpenter is learning to do what she wants, and tune out the rest. “If I really wanted to, I could have stretched out Short n’ Sweet much, much longer,” she says. “But I’m at that point in my life where I’m like, ‘Wait a second, there’s no rules.’ If I’m inspired to write and make something new, I would rather do that. Why would I wait three years just for the sake of waiting three years? It’s all about what feels right. I’m learning to listen to that a lot more, instead of what is perceived as the right or wrong move.”

At least for right now, with Man’s Best Friend under wraps, she doesn’t have to think about others’ opinions. “I’m living in the glory of no one hearing it or knowing about it, and so I can not care,” Carpenter says. “I can not give a fuck about it, because I’m just so excited.”

It’s our final round in the cold plunge, and it’s a brutal one. We’ve decided to cap it at a minute, which feels like an eternity. “I’m really contemplating my life,” Carpenter says. She peers over at me, her hair tucked away in a tortoise claw clip, and tries to distract herself. “Do you know any good pubs in London?” 

“MANCHILD” KICKS OFF with Carpenter uttering two words: a loaded “Oh, boy.” It’s slightly similar to the Short n’ Sweet deluxe gem “Busy Woman,” which opens with a playful “Oh, hey,” only there’s a message behind this particular intro. “It’s literally like, ‘Previously on,’ ” Carpenter explains. “It’s been a second since we’ve said hi, so there is a sense of ‘We’re back in it.’ It’s a deep breath and an eye roll, and back into the story, which I think is …” 

But before she can reveal the story, Carpenter stops herself. “I’m always thinking about life and my music like it’s a movie,” she says. “Which is such a 25-year-old thing to say.” (She turned 26 on May 11.) “But I really never felt like more of a main character in a coming-of-age movie than when I listened to the song, and that’s how I wanted the video to feel.” Carpenter’s songs are usually born out of two scenarios: intentional writing sessions or spontaneous bursts of creativity that could happen anywhere or anytime, where she crafts a song in a moment of catharsis. “Manchild” falls into the latter category. “That was one of those times, which is why it feels more special,” she says. “If I’m not at the studio right now writing something, then I’m going to die.” Carpenter sees songwriting as a way to freeze her feelings in time. “I need to make sense of what I’m feeling and what I’m going through, and put it down on paper.”

She means that literally. While Carpenter uses the Notes app on her phone to write (like us civilians, she’s currently running out of iCloud storage), she employs a notebook a friend gifted her. Titled “Pop Hits, Sabrina Carpenter,” it’s where she wrote most of Short n’ Sweet. “I never thought I’d be that bitch writing it down on paper,” she jokes. 

Carpenter didn’t consciously set out to make another album. After Short n’ Sweet wrapped, she continued writing and working with Antonoff and Allen, with no expectations. She describes the process as slow and steady — they’d have to weed out several bad songs to find “one good one,” but there was little frustration. Far from it, actually: Carpenter was absolutely psyched. “I’ve really just been making things, excited about them, and then continuing forth,” she says. “Not to be dramatic, but what can I do while my legs still work? I’m limber, let’s use it. My brain is sharp, let’s write. I try not to get sad about the fact that nothing lasts forever, but genuinely, it’s such a beautiful time right now. I want to soak it up and keep making things while I’m feeling this way.” 

Carpenter is a student of pop, and when looking back at her favorite artists’ discographies, from Parton to Linda Ronstadt, she made a crucial observation — one that informed her decision to follow up Short n’ Sweet so quickly. “They would release a 10-song album every year,” she says. “I’m like, ‘When did we stop doing that?’ Writers write, they make music, and they release music. I understand the beauty of disappearing. My last two albums both took two and a half years to make, and they needed to. I just think every project is different. It just has to feel right.”

Antonoff agrees: “I think, as a culture, we got a little obsessed with marketing. The lesson to me, which we talked about when we’re making this, is that listening to anything besides the music as a guide is ridiculous.”

Most artists would buckle under the pressure of having to follow up an album that dream-come-true’d their whole lives, but it only fueled Carpenter to keep creating. Man’s Best Friend “wasn’t written from a place of ‘How do I one-up myself?’ or ‘How do I re-­create something else?’ ” she says. “Short n’ Sweet was this magical gift; it fed me, and it fed a lot of other people in the world. It felt true to me, and it felt authentic to a lot of other people. It’s rare that those line up ever, let alone more than once. It unlocked my brain to know myself more and more.” 

“I Don’t Want to Get Cocky. I’ve Been Here 10 Years, but Also 10 Minutes.”

Antonoff felt a new era started the minute “Manchild” was born, completed right before the new year, along with two other tracks they knocked out. “When I heard those three, that was the moment when I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ ” he says. “You could imagine the entire album from that point, because the songs had such an identity.

“I find a lot of this album to be some of the most honest work I’ve ever heard,” he adds. “There’s something really celebratory about it, but most of the lyrical content is about disappointment in relationships and all the different shapes it takes. I think it’s a celebration of those who let you down.”

IN BETWEEN COLD plunges, we sit in the suite’s wood-paneled sauna, as Carpenter plays music off a Bluetooth speaker: Sam Cooke’s “Nothing Can Change This Love,” Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour,” Joan Baez’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe,” and Fleetwood Mac’s “As Long as You Follow” (she’s a Christine girl, citing the 1974 deep cut “Prove Your Love” as her favorite Mac song). 

The Rebase employee, a lanky fellow named Rico, brings us a snowball infused with peppermint oil. “He’s my king,” Carpenter tells me as he exits. “I feel like he would take such good care of me in my life.” Carpenter loves essential oils, and uses a particular blend of them (lavender, geranium, and chamomile) when she’s on her period. “I’m literally going to get it today or tomorrow, which sucks,” she says. “Playing shows when you’re in your … do you know about the luteal phase?” she asks, casually referring to the post-ovulating, pre-menstruating portion of the cycle. “I’m very into the luteal phase right now. I’ve been like, ‘Oh, that’s why I’m ugly for 10 days out of the month.’ ” 

Carpenter says her exes got her into cold plunging. “I really got introduced to this shit by boys that I’ve dated that I made fun of for doing it,” she explains. She references the Short n’ Sweet cut “Dumb & Poetic,” in which she disses a wellness bro who ingests mushrooms, reads self-help books, and meditates. It’s the one with the line about Leonard Cohen, which caused a stir online, and Carpenter, with the help of her sister and creative partner, Sarah, even includes a 1966 Cohen TV interview to screen when she performs the song on tour.

“It’s very that, to be honest,” she says of her foray into contrast therapy. “I would always make fun of it, being like, ‘Oh, the cold shower isn’t going to fix your mental health. You need to actually maybe see a therapist.’ But then I tried it, and I was like, ‘You know what? There’s a little something to it.’ Mentally, it’s not getting my life together, but it’s definitely helping my body heal, and it’s helping me have a little bit more clarity and energy. Unfortunately, it’s a cult, but I’m here for it.” She adds: “I have a type, I guess.”

As the Bee Gees’ “Emotion” plays in the sauna, Carpenter mentions she rewatched Saturday Night Fever the other night. “My favorite fun fact I’ve learned is that [four] of their biggest hits were written for the movie,” she says. “Isn’t that insane? They just locked in so hard.” 

Sweating inside the chamber, as our eyes start to burn from the peppermint, we touch on the dark underbelly of Saturday Night Fever — that beneath the euphoric music and sweaty dance floors, there’s a lot of cringeworthy scenes of rape, suicide, and racism. Also, teens openly having sex in vehicles. “They all just casually fucked in front of each other,” Carpenter says. “I was like, ‘Did people used to do that?’ Because I was not alive, and now, oh, my God, privacy is everything. They’re just hanging out in cars, fucking in front of their friends. If my friends were ­fucking in the corner, I would be so deeply offended, and scared. But it was such a dif­ferent time.” 

When it comes to Seventies music, however, nothing comes close to how Carpenter feels about ABBA. She is such a superfan that she named her two British shorthair cats Benny and Björn, after Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, and she regularly covers the Swedish pop legends during the “slumber party” portion of her set. “It’s such a kismet artist for the show,” she says. “I don’t know if there’s any other artists in the world [who] make me so happy. They just understood how to make fun music without it feeling cheesy or corny. And even when it does, you’re into it, because they just sell it.”

The band’s digital residency, ABBA Voyage, even inspired her outfits on the Short n’ Sweet tour, particularly the hazy light-blue costume that Agnetha Fältskog wears. If this seems excessive to you, just know that Carpenter nearly went a step further in her fandom: “I almost did a glow-in-the-dark look, because they had light-up outfits in their show. And I was like, ‘You know what? It’s a lot easier to do this when you’re a hologram.’ ”

Carpenter got to meet Ulvaeus in April, when she performed in Sweden and stopped by the ABBA museum. To her surprise, Ulvaeus personally gave her a tour. “She was a very kind and intelligent young woman,” Ulvaeus tells me. “I could see that there were a lot of things going through her head while we were walking around there.” Ulvaeus says his two favorite Carpenter songs are “Espresso” and “Nonsense,” a cheeky highlight from 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send (Carpenter used to perform it with highly specific, often horny outros for each individual show). “The production is … oomph! It’s up there,” he says. “She sings so well, and the hooks are irresistible. It’s true pop music.” 

“Whenever I Was Sick or in Pain, Once I Got Onstage, All of [It] Went Away.”

Carpenter is grateful for the spawn of her idols. “Thank God for the nepo babies,” Carpenter says. “Because they’re fans of mine, and I need to meet their parents.” For Ulvaeus, it’s his 16-year-old granddaughter, Edith. For Simon, it’s his 30-year-old daughter, Lulu. And for Parton, it’s her teenage nieces and nephews. “When they found out that I was going to do something with [Carpenter], oh Lord, I became a big shot,” Parton says. “I was just Aunt Dolly till then.”

When Carpenter was asked to open SNL’s 50th-anniversary special with Simon, at first she felt out of place. “I was like, ‘Are you sure you know who I am? Are you asking the right person?’ ” she says. But Carpenter is getting more comfortable being around these legendary artists. “I actually feel like I know what I’m doing,” she says. “Now, I’m not an expert. I always have more to learn. But I can stand next to people that I’ve idolized my whole life and know who I am, which is such a crazy thing to feel.”

TEN MINUTES HAVE passed inside the sauna. We have five more to go, but we’re completely overwhelmed by the scent of peppermint. Our phones eventually overheat, causing the music to stop. “I’m going to start looking like a drowned rat in the next 30 seconds,” she says. We decide to exit the chamber and end the round prematurely.

We leave the spa and hop into a black SUV with Carpenter’s team. Carpenter’s publicist tells her that earlier, her cab driver was asking who was playing the O2. When she told him it was Carpenter, he replied disapprovingly, “Oh, I know her.” 

Carpenter cracks up. “It’s not the first time I’ve upset an old guy,” she says. 

We land on Chiltern Street, and step into the quaint Monocle Cafe — where Carpenter orders a cup of green tea and tells a starstruck barista she loves her earrings — then briefly saunter inside a chic magazine shop. But our time is cut short after fans start noticing Carpenter on the street. She’s deeply kind to them, initiating a photo for one and telling another, “You smell amazing!”

Having grown up a child actor, Carpenter is used to being spotted in public, but the attention multiplied by a thousand after Short n’ Sweet. She often disguises herself by wearing a brown wig (a hat, she points out, shall not cover her blonde bombshell hair). “Now I gave you my fucking disguise,” she says. “But it’s fine, I’ll get a new one.” 

These public interactions are often pleasant, but they can be rather scary, too. “I’m a genuinely chill person, I think. If someone treats me like a person, absolutely, I want to meet people. It’s only when people get weird that I’m like, ‘Ooooh, and now I’m going to lock myself in my house for the time being.’ ”

Sarah and Carpenter’s best friend, Paloma Sandoval, often worry about Carpenter’s safety. They tell me about a recent day off while on tour in the U.K., when they took her to Urban Outfitters. Even with her wig, a hat, a scarf around her face, and a massive coat, eagle-eyed fans still spotted Carpenter. “It’s so hard to disguise her, because she has such prominent eyebrows,” Sarah notes. 

In some ways, Carpenter has been preparing for this moment her whole life. She was born in 1999 in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, the youngest of four girls (her half sister, Cayla, is the oldest, followed by Shannon, Sarah, and Sabrina). Her mom, Elizabeth, introduced Carpenter to vocal powerhouses like Etta James, Patsy Cline, Whitney Houston, and Aretha Franklin, while her dad, David, introduced her to classic rock: Queen, the Beatles, and a whole lot of Rush. “ ‘The Trees’ is the longest song I’ve ever heard,” she jokes of the Canadian prog band. “I heard it my whole childhood.”

Carpenter’s parents’ wedding song was, fittingly, the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun.” “I’m so honored when people are like, ‘Are you related?’ ” Carpenter says. “I wish I was. That would make so much sense as to why I sing, because my mom, with all due respect, she’s a chiropractor and should never sing. Same with my father. So I don’t know where it came from.”

For Sarah, Sabrina’s music was the soundtrack to her childhood. Sarah would accompany her sister to singing lessons and hear her parents blast her YouTube videos around the house. “She’s not lying,” Carpenter says. “It’s unfortunate.” You can find these videos online, featuring an adorable Carpenter, around 10 years old, belting the hell out of James’ “At Last,” Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and hits by Taylor Swift, Christina Aguilera, and Adele. There’s even a cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” in which she impersonates a mini Axl Rose, down to the headband — childhood memories indeed.

There’s a moment from this time that sticks with Sarah, when Carpenter had a nasty cold and was slated to perform at a local festival. “She just couldn’t get over this cold, and she couldn’t sing,” she remembers. “But once she hit that stage, she sang like nobody’s ever sung before. From that moment, it just struck me that this is what she’s meant to do. That’s where she belongs.” Carpenter says the memory sticks with her, too. “I always found that when I was sick or when I was in a lot of pain, once I got onstage, all of [it] went away,” she says. “I was just like, ‘That’s such a cool little trick that I can do.’ It’s such a cool little superpower.” 

“I’ve Tried Being Brunette and It Didn’t Look Good, So This Is What It Is.” 

Even back in those days, Carpenter was determined to make music her career. “I was like, ‘This is my unpaid job. I need to do this every week. I need to continue to get better,’ which is so weird for a kid to think that way,” she says. “It wasn’t like I had connections or the information on how to do that. Neither did my parents. We definitely made mistakes. I wouldn’t trade that for the world, though. It brought me thicker skin, and I can be a little bit more savvy when people are trying to manipulate me. Sad, but it’s true. It’s part of growing up in any field, especially as a young woman.”

When Carpenter was 12, she signed a deal with Disney’s Hollywood Records, and a year later, she got the role on Girl Meets World as sidekick Maya Hart and moved to L.A. with her mom. Carpenter got other acting parts — including episodes of Orange Is the New Black and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit — but her role in the three-season Boy Meets World spinoff showcased her comedic chops and earned her a fan base. Does she ever revisit it? “Against my will,” she says. “It’s going to be very weird and trippy to look back on it when I’m much older. But for now, I just shiver at the outfits.”

Carpenter takes a similar stance on her early music. “If you ever listen to my old albums … which, don’t,” she says. But she points out that even back then, her pop albums dabbled in various genres — folk, country, R&B, and even Eighties. “What I was really trying to do is what I’m doing right now, and what I think I accomplished with Short n’ Sweet,” she says.

While critics loved the “genre hopping” of Short n’ Sweet, what was fascinating was how cohesive Carpenter made it feel. According to Antonoff, that’s largely due to Carpenter just being herself. “When your personality is that strong, genre opens up,” he says. “Genre opens up when it’s not the most important part of what you do. When we’re working together, it’s a secondary thought. It’s something to play with. Something leans a bit into a genre we didn’t expect, which happens many times on this [new] album. If anything, it just causes some smiles in the room.”

Carpenter is extremely self-aware, particularly when it comes to her sense of humor. She gives deep, eloquent responses to questions about her sarcasm — partly because she’s asked about it so often, but also because she knows herself better than she ever has. Since she was a teenager, she’s viewed humor as her sharpest tool in the shed — a device to say exactly what she means. 

“Anytime I didn’t really want to be nice and please people, I could use sarcasm as a tactic of being transparent, and I didn’t come across as rude or bitchy or hard to work with,” she says. “This opens a whole other conversation [about] how women have to reshape their dialogue and overall intentions in order to make sure they’re not coming off a certain way. When in reality, I’ve started to realize it doesn’t make you a bad person to be assertive, or know what you want.”

Jokes, Carpenter also realizes, help soften the blow and prevent her from hurting people — a strategy that also shows up in her music. “When I’m writing, it’s so much harder for me to say something that doesn’t have a little bit of a wink to it, because that is just the way that I speak,” she says. “It’s the way that I communicate with my friends, my family, and with lovers. There isn’t an evil bone in me. So if I’m having a bad day, the joke makes it a little less bitchy.” (Like all of us, she has bouts of anxiety and stress, a mood she dubs
“Bitchy Brina.”) 

Carpenter knew “Manchild” would create a lot of online discourse, with sleuths desperate to figure out who she’s singing about (she also humorously calls out said man’s mom). Some assume it’s about Carpenter’s ex, actor Barry Keoghan; he appeared in her video for “Please Please Please,” another song fans think is about their relationship.

Even now, several months after tabloids ran stories that they broke up, outlets are still posting relationship timelines about the couple. Carpenter tries not to read them — she’s mostly “immune and numb” to online gossip, she says. “When you get down the little rabbit hole is truly when people start commenting on you as a person or you physically,” she says. “All of those things that you’re already thinking on a day-to-day basis. You don’t need a stranger from Arkansas to remind you.”

But Carpenter sometimes can’t help but notice just how inaccurate a lot of articles are, particularly the timelines. “You’re like, ‘That didn’t happen then. That did happen then. You’re missing a few key details there,’ ” she says. “People underestimate how tricky it is to navigate being a young woman, having relationships, and then having a bunch of strangers have opinions on them. Because surely, all of these people that are commenting, if they had the same microscope on their personal lives, I don’t think they’d be as eloquently spoken as me. I know it’s a tale as old as time. It’s just unfortunate that it’s still a tale.” 

I ask Carpenter if she’s single now. “Am I doing the single thing right now?” she asks. “I’m doing the 25-year-old thing right now, whatever that means.” The internet has been obsessed with Carpenter’s love life since 2021, when a little heartbreak power ballad called “Drivers License” arrived that January. Olivia Rodrigo, another former Disney star, sang “You’re probably with that blonde girl,” and all of our computers blew up in flames. Your grandmother probably heard about a certain teenage love triangle — involving Rodrigo, her High School Musical: The Musical: The Series co-star Joshua Bassett, and Carpenter, who was made the villain. 

“I’ve Never Lived in a Time Where Women Have Been More Picked Apart and Scrutinized.”

Carpenter released “Skin,” which many suspected was in response to the drama (“Maybe blonde was the only rhyme,” she sang). On the Emails I Can’t Send ballad “Because I Liked a Boy,” she laid out the destruction in plain view: “Now I’m a homewrecker, I’m a slut/I got death threats filling up semi-trucks.”

If this all feels like a long time ago to you, it feels like a lifetime ago to Carpenter. But I’m not interested in talking about those events. I’m more interested in finding out if her restless work ethic is maybe — perhaps unconsciously — fueled by her desire to shed the “blonde girl” accusation, once and for all.

“I didn’t really intentionally do that,” she says. “All I knew was that it wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I loved, ever. That’s kind of how I’ve always felt. Sometimes, it’s about how you are able to be resilient. What that era taught me was to just trust myself, and trust that everything is going to work out the way it’s supposed to, and trust that relationships are put into your life for a reason. You might not see that in the moment, but you see it later.” I ask Carpenter how often she thinks about this era, and she pauses before responding with a Don Draper-like deadpan: “I don’t think about it, ever.”

Naturally, she caps off this exchange with a classic Carpenter quip: “I’ve tried being ­brunette, and it didn’t look good on me, so this is what it is.” 

DESPITE WHAT THE song says, Carpenter is very bad at vacationing. Her give-a-fucks are normally with her at home, or when she’s busy working out three or four days a week, using the fitness platform the Sculpt Society. But she finally took a vacation in late March, when she had a brief break from touring, and went to Lake Como with her friends, band, and dancers. Her ears kept popping from the elevation, but it was worth it. “We played running charades and drank Limoncello spritzes for two days,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is actually really nice. This restored me.’ Maybe I need that again. That’s my goal this year. I feel like I’ve never had an issue working hard, so now I have to prioritize not being terrible at vacationing.”

I meet Carpenter again in early May, at the Italian restaurant Palma in New York’s Greenwich Village (it’s on Cornelia Street, made famous thanks to her friend Taylor Swift). She arrives in a bubblegum-pink set, with white sandals and a matching white shoulder purse, her blond hair in another claw clip. She freezes when she sees me, pointing to my kelly-­green outfit and my hair that’s also in a clip. “Fuck!” she says. “We look like Wicked!”

Carpenter takes a seat in the private kitchen, a diamond ring in the shape of her initials on her left hand, and a ring with an empty locket on her right. She has rosy lip liner on, and prescription cat eyeglasses that make her look like a ­Sixties secretary. The wooden table is laden with glass vases of pink peonies that cover nearly every inch of the table, with lit taper candles and bowls of citrus thrown into the mix, like a scene from Under the Tuscan Sun. 

Double doors lead out to the outdoor garden, while a set of stairs leads up into a room above, where a party starts to filter in. Carpenter covers her face, shielding herself from the line of guests walking up the stairs. “L-O-L, it’s girls’ night,” she observes. “Me not turning around out of fear.” Later, she points to the ceiling, gesturing to the rowdy noise. “Why aren’t we celebrating like that?” 

Carpenter splits her time between L.A. and New York. It’s easier for her to avoid the paparazzi in New York, particularly in the Financial District, where she’s lived since 2021. She rented an Airbnb for two months to write Emails I Can’t Send and never moved out. “Thankfully, the owners really took a liking to my sister and I,” she says. 

She’s been coming to Palma ever since then, explaining it’s owned by her friend Amber Mark’s family (Mark is also a musician). “The chef told me three times that he has a cauliflower that you like,” the waiter tells her, before he brings out the pan-roasted vegetable, as well as an order of arancini and crispy artichokes. 

Carpenter is selective about when she drinks, especially on tour, claiming she can feel the substance decomposing her body. “People are already so critical of the way I look every other day that when I don’t feel good from the inside out, it’s just a nightmare, and it can get dark out there,” she says. 

We order mocktail Aperol spritzes, extolling the benefits of not drinking — from the quality of sleep to the clean headspace. “But for me, if I’m out with friends and it’s for the plot, let’s do it,” she says. “By the way, if I’m ever at home alone with a full bottle of wine and no occasion and no one to talk to, call the police.” 

When Carpenter is home, there’s another side of her that fans rarely see — the quiet and introspective version who isn’t inserting innuendos and cracking one-liners. Her stage presence, she says, is “not a projection, it’s how I feel. But you can’t possibly be that energetic and happy all the time. So when I get home, I can be the really toned-down, quiet, chill version of myself. I love entertaining, but I also sometimes love shutting the fuck up and being to myself. Observing, reading, watching, and listening. I spend a lot of time in my own head, which is good and bad.” 

“I love entertaining, but I also sometimes love shutting the fuck up…I spend a lot of time in my own head, which is good and bad.”

You can sense Carpenter’s more serious side in some of her songs, like the stunning “Lie to Girls,” off Short n’ Sweet. Penned with Antonoff and Allen, it’s one of her strongest songwriting achievements, a heartbreak anthem about how women often go to great lengths to avoid the “ugly truth” about their shitty partners. “You don’t have to lie to girls/If they like you, they’ll just lie to themselves,” she sings.

On tour, Carpenter performs it on an acoustic guitar, a stripped-down, intimate moment she says is rarely captured on video or photographed. That’s because a majority of the focus is on the sexual nature of the tour, from her wardrobe (corseted bodysuits glittering in sequins, garter belts, lacy baby-doll nighties) to the horny choreography (that word, by the way, literally flashes across the screen at one point).

If “Juno” — an indie-pop gem from Short n’ Sweet that’s named after the 2007 teen-pregnancy film, where she sings “I might let you make me Juno” — wasn’t explicit enough, she takes it a step further.

As she sings “Wanna try out some freaky positions? Have you ever tried this one?” she acts out sex positions, changing it up every time (and before you ask, yes, fans have compiled them online). For “Bed Chem,” Carpenter ends the track on a heart-shaped bed, staging intercourse with a male dancer behind a curtain. These viral moments have resulted in Carpenter being shamed online, with some parents even deeming her shows inappropriate for children. 

“It’s always so funny to me when people complain,” she says. “They’re like, ‘All she does is sing about this.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly you love sex. You’re obsessed with it. It’s in my show. There’s so many more moments than the ‘Juno’ positions, but those are the ones you post every night and comment on. I can’t control that. If you come to the show, you’ll [also] hear the ballads, you’ll hear the more introspective numbers. I find irony and humor in all of that, because it seems to be a recurring theme. I’m not upset about it, other than I feel mad pressure to be funny sometimes.” 

This is an important topic for Carpenter, and we discuss it again on the phone a few weeks later. “I don’t want to be pessimistic, but I truly feel like I’ve never lived in a time where women have been picked apart more, and scrutinized in every capacity. I’m not just talking about me. I’m talking about every female artist that is making art right now.” 

I tell Carpenter that the conversation is fitting, considering that down on Cornelia Street, fans are posing outside of Swift’s former home and taking photos. “That’s what I’m saying,” she says. “We’re in such a weird time where you would think it’s girl power, and women supporting women, but in reality, the second you see a picture of someone wearing a dress on a carpet, you have to say everything mean about it in the first 30 seconds that you see it.” 

This echoes “Needless to Say,” the vinyl-only bonus track to Short n’ Sweet, where Carpenter takes aim at the online scrutiny she faces (“A pretty dress, an awkward angle/I bet you zoomed in close and held it up to show all of your friends,” she sings). “It’s something that keeps coming back,” she says. “We just have to grow thicker skin, but they don’t have to learn how to shut their mouths.” 

Carpenter looks up to Parton in this regard. “She’s always dealt with it with wit and humor,” she says. The duo spent hours together in a pickup truck while filming the video for “Please Please Please,” having such a deep conversation that they muted their mics for a portion of it. “I bet they’re squirmin’ now, dying to know what we’re talking about!” Parton says, recalling how she felt during the truck conversation. “There was a lot we didn’t mind, but there’s just such a thing as your privacy. I remember saying, ‘Don’t ever sacrifice your morals and your soul and your principles and your own values.’ I’ll always treasure what we did. I’ll hold her precious in my heart and in my head.”

For Carpenter, life as a pop star means living with bits of insanity and chaos, with having to “fight off video-game demons” every couple of hours. “What people probably don’t realize is the more eyes you have on you, the harder it is to love what you’re doing, and you have to keep fighting to still love making things and to still love performing,” she says. “Because the critical sides start to taint it, and they start to make things less fun. They start to make friendships and relationships less fun and enjoyable. [But] there’s still so much light and goodness in this, if you’re doing it for the reason of you love it and can’t live without it.”

She’s been trying to stay in that headspace this year, as she prepares for this new era. Like her cold plunges, she’s jumping in and bracing for whatever happens. “In the timespan of a year, you’re able to feel incredible about yourself, terrible about yourself, and everything in between,” she’d said at dinner. “It’s definitely not always great, and I don’t always feel like I know what’s happening. But right now, today at Palma with this spritz, I feel like I have some clarity on what I want, at least for the near future, which is rare. I’m so lucky to be in a place right now where I feel present.”

But she also knows that five years from now, she could look back on this moment and find the joke, the way she’s always done. What would she say to herself? 

She smiled. 

“Fucking liar.”