Sabrina Carpenter has heard your compliments, and she knows exactly what caused the glow-up.
“Trauma,” she deadpans, without missing a beat.
That might be the most honest thing about emails I can’t send, a record bursting at the seams with exactly the sort of raw emotion, gallows humor, and unexpected poetry that comes from digging through your inbox at 3 a.m. “There were moments where I was like, ‘I'm so scared, but life’s too short not to say how I truly feel,’” Carpenter says. “And maybe deal with some consequences.”
She’s not writing lyrics as much as she’s letting herself spiral, in the best way possible. The album’s title track started as a message to herself she didn’t think anyone would ever read, let alone sing along to. “I just needed to say it or I would go crazy,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to put it on my friends, or my family, or even a therapist. I needed to process it alone.”
Lucky for us, she eventually hit send.
emails is Carpenter’s first album post-Hollywood Records, and while she’s diplomatic about her Disney past, there’s no question that her post-20s shift came with fewer filters and a sharper pen. “It had more to do with me than anything else,” she insists. “But yeah, Island let me be a songwriter. From day one.”
Even the songs that sound cute have teeth. “Because I Liked a Boy” got dissected by every gossip blog with a pulse, but Carpenter says she wasn’t out to write about cyberbullying. “It would have been too real,” she laughs. “But it's great that people heard it that way—it was never supposed to be that conscious. It was just me telling the story the way it happened.”
And while much has been made about the song’s “scandal,” Carpenter would rather talk about how satisfying it is to get a crowd of thousands to scream “I'm a homewrecker, I'm a slut.” “That was the part I was most excited about,” she admits. “It’s just fun.”
Fun is something she’s allowed herself more of lately—especially on “Nonsense,” the giddy pop closer that almost went fully feral. “Some of the lines were too dirty. Some were just too ridiculous. I had to keep them to myself,” she teases. “But I needed a good laugh. We all did.”
You can hear the fingerprints of her heroes in those left-turn moments—she cites Dolly Parton, Alanis Morissette, Ani DiFranco, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King as spiritual guides. “I used to feel like I couldn’t reference those artists. They were too brilliant,” she says. “But then I realized, that’s the music that made me feel something.”
Speaking of Dolly: yes, she was an influence. Yes, there’s pedal steel. And yes, Carpenter starts every morning by spinning Heartbreaker on vinyl. “Dolly’s influence always lives,” she says reverently.
If she sounds at ease, it’s because she is. She’s producing her own film projects now too—Emergency kicked off her year, and more are in the pipeline under her production company, which she started during the pandemic. “It’s been such an incredible learning experience,” she says. But right now, it’s all about the music.
Well, music and tigers.
One recent music video featured a live tiger named Chica. “Life of Pi was the fuel,” she explains. “I’ve always dreamed of working with a tiger.” In the '80s everyone wanted a monkey in their video. “Why a monkey?” she shrugs. “Who knows. Eras, I guess.”
In the era of Sabrina Carpenter 2.0, you don’t get a monkey. You get a tiger. You get a pop record that starts like a breakup email and ends like a tequila-fueled voice memo. You get a homewrecker anthem and a letter to your younger self, sometimes in the same verse.
You get honesty, finally, in all its hilarious, messy, trauma-soaked glory.
Watch the interview above and then check out videos below.
