How Sabrina Carpenter shed her Disney image to become world's most controversial star… from sex shock to A-list affairs

The Sun

05-07-2025

On her hit song Espresso, Sabrina Carpenter tells us: 'I'm working late 'cause I'm a singer', and it's clear all those long days have paid off.
It might feel like she's an overnight success, but in reality, the 26 year old has spent a decade trying to get to the top.
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As she puts it: 'I've been here 10 years, but also 10 minutes.'
It was Espresso – one of the biggest hits of last year, which even Adele has confessed to loving – that finally propelled Sabrina into the spotlight.
Taken from her album Short n' Sweet, it was a genuine pop-culture moment, spending a record-breaking 43 consecutive weeks in the UK's Top 5.
She was also the first female artist in history to hold the UK No.1 album and Top 3 singles at the same time.
And it's not just Adele who is a celebrity fan. She's had the blessing of the world's biggest female pop star, Taylor Swift, after being asked to support her on the 25-date US leg of the Eras tour.
Sabrina explained: 'Watching [Taylor] keep their attention as if she's playing in their living room, it was like – and I told her this – 'Your tour enabled me to do mine'.'
And she's also won over her hero, Dolly Parton – another 5ft blonde with big hair who takes no nonsense. The pair duetted on one of Sabrina's biggest hits Please Please Please.
Dolly revealed: 'Our voices are very similar. 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.'
And the big things are only getting bigger. Sabrina's new song Manchild, rumoured to be about her Irish-actor ex, Barry Keoghan, debuted at No.1 on both sides of the Atlantic last month and is taken from her much anticipated new album, Man's Best Friend, due to be released on August 29.
Tonight, she performs a second sold-out show to 65,000 fans at British Summertime (BST) Hyde Park, so it's no surprise that rock bible Rolling Stone magazine has dubbed 2025 the 'Summer of Sabrina'.
Sabrina Carpenter confirms new summer drink 'hard launching' her deal with Dunkin' – but it's not espresso
Of course, she's not without controversy. Many people became aware of her thanks to another BST headliner, Olivia Rodrigo.
Olivia's first single, Driver's License, was about an anonymous blonde girl who stole her boyfriend, fellow Disney Channel actor Joshua Bassett.
Rumours were rife that the girl in question was Sabrina, and she hit back with her own track, Because I Liked A Boy, singing: 'Now I'm a homewrecker, I'm a s**t, I got death threats filling up semi-trucks.'
It was the title track of her 2022 album, Emails I Can't Send, that showcased Sabrina's songwriting talent.
She has hinted that the track is about her dad David's infidelity and how it impacted her, with lyrics including: 'Thanks to you, I can't love right/I get nice guys and villainise them/Read their texts like they're havin' sex right now/Scared I'll find out that it's true/And if I do, then I blame you.'
She later revealed she played it to her mother before her father heard it.
It all goes to show that Sabrina is not scared who she upsets – which is lucky, as the artwork for her latest album – depicting her on her hands and knees with a man grabbing a fistful of her hair – has truly set the cat among the pigeons.
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It has been criticised on one hand for being regressive and setting women's rights back, while Sabrina's supporters insist her detractors are missing the point – that the image is a proud celebration of her confident sexuality.
Meanwhile, Sabrina herself told Rolling Stone: '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 scrutinised in every capacity.
'I'm not just talking about me. I'm talking about every female artist that is making art right now.'
In many ways, it feels like Sabrina is the successor to Madonna, whose provocative songs and performances were intended to shock.
Huge stars have leapt to her defence, with 81-year-old singer-songwriter Carly Simon saying: 'She's not doing anything outrageous. It seems tame.
"There have been far flashier covers than hers. One of the most startling covers I've ever seen was [The Rolling Stones'] Sticky Fingers. That was out there in terms of sexual attitude. So I don't know why [Sabrina is] getting such flak.'
It's no surprise Sabrina wants to shed her 'good girl' image, following in the footsteps of others who started their careers on the Disney Channel.
'She's killed off her innocent image, just as Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and all the others had to,' says PR guru Mark Borkowski.
'The young people who grew up watching her have also grown up, and kids today are growing up faster – some would say too fast. So she is giving her audience what they want, or at least what she thinks they want.'
Her lyrics are heavy with sexual undertones, and her performance at the BRITs in March drew complaints when it was broadcast before 9pm, leading her to post on Instagram: 'I now know what watershed is!!!!'
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Meanwhile, on her last tour she recreated a different sexual position each night during her song Juno [named after the movie about teen pregnancy], asking: 'Have you ever tried this one?' before writhing on stage in a barely there outfit.
Her antics horrified parents of younger children, but were adored by many of her older fans.
Unsurprisingly, the clips of the positions went viral each night.
Speaking about the controversy in Rolling Stone, Sabrina said: 'It's always so funny to me when people complain. 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 comments 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.'
From an early age, Sabrina knew she wanted to be a star, even though she came from a regular family, hailing from a distinctly unstarry place called Quakertown in Pennsylvania.
She's the youngest of four girls, and her mother Elizabeth works as a chiropractor, while her father David works for an X-ray servicing company.
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She started singing on her own YouTube channel at the age of nine. Her dad made a little studio under the stairs and learned how to create and edit videos for her.
She insisted on being homeschooled, so that she could spend her time auditioning and signed to Disney's Hollywood Records when she was 12.
A year later, her big break came when she landed a role in Disney show Girl Meets World. Her mum moved to Los Angeles with Sabrina, while her dad stayed at home with her sisters.
She worked throughout her teens, bringing out four albums and starring in a variety of teen films, but never quite made it to the next level.
But then in 2022, after the pandemic and with a new record label, she released Emails I Can't Send, her breakthrough genre-bending album.
For her first adult project she worked with her sister Sarah, who provides her creative influence, along with fellow writer Amy Allen, and it was co-produced with Taylor Swift's pal Jack Antonoff.
The abum is filled with songs about love, heartbreak and ambition, and she says that she was an 'emotional wreck' when she wrote it.
But several of the songs brought a degree of notoriety.
It seemed like each song had a story to go with it. The video for Please Please Please co-starred her then-boyfriend and Oscar-nominated star of Saltburn, Barry Keoghan – the pair split in December last year, citing their busy schedules as the reason.
The track, which became one of her biggest hits, references an actor boyfriend and tells the story of someone who knows they are in the wrong relationship.
'This just really hits for the girls that have every right to go back to someone who isn't good for them and know that those mistakes are absolutely human to make – and repeatedly,' she told Time magazine last year. 'The amount of times that we've all been with people we shouldn't be. . .'
'I see her as a featherweight genius,' says Mark Borkowski, who admits he questions her longevity.
'Like a lot of pop stars now, she has a really profound digital social literacy. She's brilliant at creating the type of content that gets shared and becomes clickbait.
"She's found a way of getting the fame machine to work for her – with all the algorithms and the viral clips. She's the perfect pop star for the algorithm age,' he adds.
Before her show tonight, she will no doubt have taken an icy plunge bath, after becoming obsessed with cold water therapy.
'I really got introduced to this s**t by boys that I've dated that I made fun of for doing it,' she has said. '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.'
Despite the doubters, it feels like no one is going to pour cold water on Sabrina's career any time soon.
'Sabrina Carpenter is such a unique songwriting talent that I don't think the world has even caught up with it yet,' says songwriter Alexis Strum, who has penned songs for artists including Kylie Minogue.
'I think she is severely underestimated, and is actually really witty and makes brave choices with her top lines.
'It's no coincidence that she's worked with Dolly Parton and, in years to come, she may have her own 'Sabrinawood', because she has such a knack for generalising her life experience into song.
It's a gift that both Adele has and Amy Winehouse had in spades – mining your relationships to create relatable lyrics that the world will sing back to you for decades to come.
'It has taken some time to get to the top, but Sabrina never doubted it would happen.'
Sabrina told Rolling Stone: 'I've always had a really weird relationship with the universe and I always felt like it was going to work out.
"I try not to get sad about the fact that nothing lasts forever but, genuinely, it's such a beautiful time now.
'I want to soak it up and keep making things while I'm feeling this way.'
SABRINA'S CV
2011 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
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In her first-ever acting role, an 11-year-old Sabrina plays a trafficking victim who's interviewed by Detective Stabler (Christopher Meloni). A star was born.
2013 Orange Is The New Black
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Sabrina guest stars in the hit Netflix prison comedy, starring as bully Jessica Wedge who tells a young Alex Vause (Laura Prepon): 'You dress like a bum.' Meow!
2014-2017 Girl Meets World
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At 15, she nabs the coveted role of Maya Hart in Disney's spin-off of the popular 1993 series Boy Meets World. 'That was my world and that was my everything,' she said in 2020.
2016 Adventures In Babysitting
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Sabrina takes on the part of Jenny in this remake of the '80s classic, in which two rival babysitters have the night from hell when one of their charges goes missing.
2020 Mean Girls on Broadway
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Making her Broadway debut, Ms Carpenter shows off her voice playing Lindsay Lohan's character Cady in the stage version of the hit film. So fetch.
2020 Clouds
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Based on a true story, this Disney sobfest (directed by Justin Baldoni of It Ends With Us) tells the story of a terminally ill teen and his best friend and love interest, played by Sabrina.