💥 BREAKING NEWS: Sabrina Carpenter opens up about a whirlwind year of Man’s Best Friend, Taylor Swift collabs, and fighting to grow beyond a 12-year-old star⚡ .QN

It’s Halloween night at Madison Square Garden, and a group of 20-somethings are deep into a sacred ritual: gabbing in the bathroom mirror with your girlfriends. They fluff their hair and touch up lip gloss while discussing the costumes they’re planning for a party the following night. 

“It’s so hard,” one of them sighs, “to find something that’s both slutty enough and comfy enough.” Her posse groans in sympathy and agreement.

Luckily, the artist they’re here to see has a solution. Sabrina Carpenter, who has retitled her long-running “Short n’ Sweet Tour” to “Short n’ Spooky” for the holiday, closes out her show with the exact brand of sex appeal those fans in the bathroom were shooting for. She’s wearing a floor-length gown covered in shimmering orange gems with some black spots and a blue necktie. Eventually, she tears away the bottom to reveal a miniskirt that flatters her figure, but there’s no mistaking it: She’s Fred Flintstone. 

“I was thinking about doing Pebbles or Bamm-Bamm or Wilma,” Carpenter says the following week, sitting down for a conversation in downtown New York. “And then I was like, ‘You know what? Fred can get away with things.’”

It tracks: This year, Carpenter has gotten away with a lot.

In February, she went to the Grammys as a nominated artist for the first time, taking home two awards — best pop solo performance for “Espresso” and pop vocal album for “Short n’ Sweet” — out of six nods. She celebrated those wins on the road; her first arena tour launched in September 2024, and in March, she set off on the European leg. Even as she continued  to promote “Short n’ Sweet,” the next chapter of her career began: She released “Manchild” in June, performing the song live for the first time at London’s famed summer concert series BST Hyde Park. 

“Why so sexy if so dumb? / And how survive the earth so long?” Carpenter sang, but she wasn’t just skewering her immature exes. With the single, and with the release of her seventh studio album, “Man’s Best Friend,” in August, Carpenter proved that the raunchy sensibilities of earlier songs like “Bed Chem” and “Juno” were much deeper than an attempt to shed her image as a good girl from Disney Channel, where she’d started her career. Instead, she was crafting a thesis on what a next-generation pop star could be. 

Within the pages of the pop playbook written over the past decade are edicts from Beyoncé and Ariana Grande about the divine power of owning your womanhood and sexuality, while Taylor Swift and Adele have taught of vulnerability as strength and confessionalism as currency. Lady Gaga and Charli xcx demonstrate that a touch of chaos can be the best medicine. Those lessons are all reflected in Carpenter’s catalog. But, at 26, she also has something to say that her big sisters in music haven’t quite gotten to yet: Love and lust drive us all to make crazy choices, so even the most devastating breakups tend to come with a funny-as-hell story or two. Why not reflect that on the radio?

“I feel like you can be super confident and strong and also knowingly fuck up and knowingly get yourself into situations that are not good for you. But you’re doing it all because you are a smart woman and because you’re in control of your life,” Carpenter says. “You can be super put-together and everything can be in shambles. Like, two things can exist!”

That’s what she was saying when she got on her hands and knees while shooting the cover for “Man’s Best Friend,” a fistful of her hair locked in an anonymous man’s grip. “You can be so in control and so not in control at the same time,” Carpenter says. In the photo, she looks directly into the camera with an inscrutable expression on her face. Is it stress, pleasure or both? Discussing the image — and the criticism it drew when it dropped in June, with many calling it degrading to women — she says, “It was about how people try to control women, and how I felt emotionally yanked around by these relationships that I had, and how much power you’re allowing yourself to give them.” 

A week after her sold-out five-night residency at Madison Square Garden, Carpenter reflects on the debacle from a hotel room in Manhattan. Minutes ago, she channeled a French chanteuse in a white Jacquemus dress and matching vintage scarf, posing for photos on the penthouse balcony. After saying goodbye to Oscar, the orange tabby she requested join her for the shoot, she trades in her lace gown for a sweatshirt, sweatpants and fleece-lined boots. Feeling cozy, she suggests that we do our interview sitting on the floor. She catches sight of my old-school tape recorder and beams: “Retro! I’m glad they’re still around!” 

If Carpenter has moments of weakness, she saves them for her love life. Things are different at work. About the “Man’s Best Friend” cover, she balances graciousness and guiltlessness with ease. “It meant one thing to me and 100 things to other people, and I was looking at it going, ‘That’s valid. Mine’s valid. What’s for dinner?’” she says with a shrug. “Not to bypass the weight that it did carry for some people. I saw it and was like, ‘That is a great point. It wasn’t the point I was trying to make.’” She’s speaking warmly, but with a firmness too — until I ask about the alternate album cover she released later, where she’s on her feet, holding a man’s arm. “Oh, girl,” she says with a wave, dismissing the idea that she’d given in to the hate. “I just wanted to take more pictures!” 

What Carpenter is polite enough not to verbalize is that the backlash proved her point, because even when the men in her life and the critics in her comments create situations out of her control, she finds her way back to the driver’s seat. “The [original cover] really says it all, even though it’s maybe not what you want me to say,” she muses. “But I was really, really grateful that the fans did listen to the album. It’s been the most beautiful reception.” “Man’s Best Friend” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, with all 12 tracks reaching the Hot 100 singles chart as well. By November, the record was certified platinum. Carpenter is a master of flirting with controversy while never getting sidelined by it, and the success of “Man’s Best Friend” has been undeterred. 

Her big year continued. In September, she was announced as a Coachella 2026 headliner, and in October, she appeared as the only featured artist on “The Life of a Showgirl,” joining Swift on the album’s title track, which details the glamorous woes of fame. Carpenter opened for her role model-turned-peer on two legs of “The Eras Tour,” during which they sang together twice and felt a deep chemistry as performers. “Ten-year-old me, for so many reasons, could not believe it — to hear our voices together,” she says. “We definitely realized it was special, but I would have never been like, ‘Hey, bestie, put me on a song.’ She was so gracious to think of me for a song that spoke to our life experiences in such a real, genuine way. It really sums up what so many young women in this industry go through.” 

On the day of our interview, Carpenter picked up another six Grammy nominations, including album of the year. A few weeks later, her “Short n’ Sweet Tour” finally came to a close. With six sold-out nights at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena, Carpenter capped off more than a year of performances with irreverent flair, spotlighting Miss Piggy as a special guest at her last show. 

Carpenter hasn’t had much time away from the stage at all since the fall of 2022, when she began touring her first post-Disney album, “Emails I Can’t Send.” “I’m definitely getting the comment of ‘You’ve been on tour forever,’” she says, but she isn’t worried about overexposure. “I’m aware of that [risk], but music finds people when they need it. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to listen!” 

Besides, those warning Carpenter about audience fatigue will get what they want soon enough. “I’m really grateful that people have been receptive of me being in their faces for a little bit too long,” she says, “and I’ll be sure to take a good nap after.”

A Sabrina Carpenter song is often born from the kind of gab sesh those girls had in the bathroom on Halloween.

Among Carpenter’s closest friends is 2025 Grammy songwriter of the year Amy Allen. The two became creative partners as Carpenter finished “Emails I Can’t Send,” with Allen later getting credits up and down both “Short n’ Sweet” and “Man’s Best Friend.”

“Every time we write together, the first hour or two we’re just excited to be hanging out,” Allen says. “We usually talk for an hour or two, just catching up on life and showing each other songs, like, ‘Have you heard this deep cut off of this random 1968 album I just heard?’” 

Then they dive into the lyric fragments floating around in their heads, pulled from earnest texts to friends or spontaneous utterances at a bar. Carpenter offers the new album’s “Go Go Juice” as an example, recalling a casual hang with Allen and “Man’s Best Friend” producers Jack Antonoff and John Ryan. “We were walking to dinner, and they were like, ‘Are we drinking tonight?’ I said, ‘I’m just drinking to call someone.’” Immediately, gears started to turn. “That’s a song. Let’s write that tomorrow,” Carpenter remembers one of them saying. A day and perhaps an ill-advised drunk dial later, the foursome had created a country-inflected “cousin to ‘Manchild,’” as she describes it.  

“I also like the idea that ‘Man’s Best Friend’ is a how-to guide, maybe, for some man out there on how to treat a woman,” she says, laughing. For instance, on “Tears,” she promises her partner sexual favors in exchange for doing the dishes — leading her detractors to claim she’s giving herself away for the bare minimum from a man. “There’s so much sarcasm in the album. More than people have been able to pick up on, unfortunately,” she says. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘You do know, right?’ Maybe I’ve gotta make it more obvious.”

While much of Carpenter’s lyricism is unabashedly horny, it’s also clever, and she’s far from being the only celebrity making jokes about sex. So the backlash initially came as a surprise.

“I think it wouldn’t matter so much if I wasn’t a childhood figure for some people,” Carpenter says, now a dozen years past her breakout role on Disney Channel’s “Girl Meets World.” “But I also can’t really help that. It’s not my fault that I got a job when I was 12 and you won’t let me evolve.”

She also knows — from her own childhood, which wasn’t so long ago — that her young fans have the capacity to glean from her lyrics what makes sense for them and figure out the rest later. She remembers looking up to female artists who happened to sing about sex when she was younger, and doesn’t feel that they influenced her to grow up any faster than she should have. “I always thought, ‘When I grow up, then I get to embrace my sexuality more. I don’t even know what that means yet!’ I don’t think they do. I wish I’d had more open conversations about all of it when I was younger, but people feel too scared to talk about it.”

She’s also noticed that “people think, ‘Oh, she’ll say and do anything.’ No. I really do have boundaries with myself — you’d be surprised!” she says. “I’m just actually living my life, and you’re watching. If you don’t like it, it’s not for you. If you do like it, let’s play.” 

And play she does. “I want to remember this as a time in my life when I really didn’t hold back,” Carpenter says. “I wore the skirts I wanted to wear; I spoke about things in a way that I won’t regret, because I was very open. I think that’s all that matters.”

On the topic of wardrobe, Carpenter brings up how her petiteness has become central to her identity, and I mention being 5-foot-2 myself. “Are you?” she coos — so I clarify that a doctor technically put me at 5-foot-2½. “That’s important,” she says, nodding. “Every half-inch counts.”

Carpenter’s cheeks go pink as she realizes what she said. We fold over into a fit of giggles, both knowing that I’ll be writing about her accidental dick joke — so she owns it. Later, I ask if she thinks her singing career will always take precedence over acting. 

“Music is always going to be my true No. 1, but there’s something really special about playing an incredible role,” she replies. “So I would say No. 1 is music and No. 1½ is acting.” Then she gives me a sly grin. “And we know how the half makes a difference.” 

Location: The Manner; Styling: Jared Ellner/A-Frame Agency; Makeup: Carolina Gonzalez /A-Frame Agency; Hair: Evanie Frausto/Streeters; Manicure: Naomi Yasuda/Forward Artists/Apres; Production: Alexey Galetskiy Productions; Look 1 (Lace Dress): Dress: Jacquemus; Scarf: Palace Costume; Look 2 (Green Dress): Dress: Conner Ives; Hat: Palace Costume; Look 3 (Leopard Dress): Dress: Vintage Emanuel Ungaro/(that) bityou vintage; Shoes: Melissa x Vivenne Westwood