Sabrina Carpenter On Barry Keoghan, Taylor Swift, “Short n’ Sweet,” and More for VARIETY Magazine

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In a new cover story for VARIETY’s Power of Young Hollywood issue, Sabrina Carpenter speaks with Associate Music Editor Thania Garcia about her upcoming album, “Short n’ Sweet.” She also talks about Barry Keoghan, her friendship with Taylor Swift, how she was alone in wanting to release “Espresso,” the title track of “Emails I Can’t Send,” and more.

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On her boyfriend Barry Keoghan, who starred in the “Please Please Please” music video, the lyrics of which say the problematic boyfriend is an actor: “He loved the song. He’s obsessed with the lyrics, and I’m so grateful for that. I don’t want to sound biased, but I think he’s one of the best actors of this generation. So getting to see him on the screen with my song as the soundtrack made the video better and all the more special…Barry’s a Libra, and so is my sister. They’re very different, but they have similarities. I tend to gravitate towards Leos as well. My dad’s a Capricorn, so maybe that’s not the direction for my future.”

On her friendship with Taylor Swift and whether that was jeopardized due to Carpenter’s ad campaign with SKIMS, which is owned by Swift’s rival, Kim Kardashian: “Well, Taylor is a rock star! She’s just such a gangster with all of it. No matter what people are saying, everything that I’ve ever seen her tackle, she’s done so with grace. The posts about me having to ‘ask for her permission’—no. She’s one of my best, best friends, and we grab dinner or text and catch up like you would with your best friend…It’s so cool for me to get a perspective on this whole process from her and the community of artists that I feel I’m close to—to get advice from them on stuff that you can’t just ask the internet. We’re always playing each other our [music], and whenever I start to think, ‘Maybe I’ll get on Twitter and say something about this,’ I’m always like, ‘Maybe I’ll write a song instead.’”

Sabrina Carpenter on “Short n’ Sweet”: “I’m so happy I finished this album before any of the songs came out. Not that I think I would have let [the singles’ success] get in my head. But I really do think sometimes you can’t help but write from a different perspective after experiencing certain life events. I’m trying to avoid calling this ‘my dream album,’ because I don’t think I would have been able to dream up this set of songs a couple years ago.”

“It’s my second ‘big girl’ album; it’s a companion but it’s not the same. When it comes to having full creative control and being a full-fledged adult, I would consider this a sophomore album.”

On “Espresso”: “I was completely alone in wanting to release ‘Espresso.’ Not so much from my immediate team. But when it came to ‘the powers above,’ there was a lot of questioning behind whether it made sense. But they trusted me in the end, and I was happy that I believed in myself at that moment.”

On the title track of “Emails I Can’t Send,” which is about the suffering that accompanied her father’s infidelity toward her mother: “I am a daddy’s girl. But my family has just gone through so much that now we’re all in a healing stage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started learning about men and relationships. I’m not perfect by any means, but it definitely makes you look at your parents differently…‘Emails’ was hard to put out, but it marked the beginning of a really freeing and artistic time for me.”

On her songwriting process: “My producers tell me I’m beating a dead horse because I’ll write a song three years after I have not spoken to the person who inspired the lyric. Also, and this is my ego talking, but I would be honored to find out someone wrote a song about me, even if it was bad. Like, ‘I triggered you enough to write a song? Go off!’”

[Photo Credit: Matthew Sprout for Variety Magazine]

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