Fresh off the buzz (and backlash) of her album cover reveal, Sabrina Carpenter upped the ante with a stunning Rolling Stone cover shoot—posing in nothing but a pair of sheer stockings with Rapunzel-length hair strategically draped over her important bits.

The profile, written by Angie Martoccio, dives deep into Sabrina’s post-fame reality: her mindset heading into the Man’s Best Friend era, how she’s navigating her newfound level of stardom, and the rituals keeping her sane in 2025.

Across multiple spa trips, dinner dates, Martoccio paints Sabrina as the perfect portrait of a 26 year old girl who's in full control of her career and direction of her life. 

When the piece kicks off, Carpenter and Martoccio are in Central London, enduring Sabrina’s post-show ritual of plunging into freezing water. Sabrina coaches the writer through it, before rising from the tub declaring, “I’m a new woman!”.

These four words set the tone for the entire piece. It’s not just a look at her current pop star status- it’s a walk through of what it took to get her here, what’s coming next, and how she actually feels about it all. 

Very quickly in the interview, we learn that it was conducted after Sabrina’s two sold-out O2 shows in London, all the way back in April, before continuing presumably through the rest of the month.

The reason Sabrina’s finally able to headline the O2? Short n’ Sweet. Her smash hit, genre-hopping, iconic album that launched her from a B-List Pop Star and into a full blown Main Pop Princess. In her breakout album, the general public finally got to see her trademark cheeky humor and witty turns of phrase.
"She’s as intelligent as someone can possibly be, which is why she’s funny,” Jack Antonoff says, praising her ability to pair profound lyrics with tongue-in-cheek delivery.

Her album earned her six Grammy noms and two wins — including Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Solo Performance for Espresso. Her first nominations ever mind you.

Sabrina talks about her start on Disney Channel, her earlier albums released by Hollywood Records (to which she says, “Don’t listen”), and her overall slow burn rise to superstardom, yet never doubting her path.

Now onto the topic on everybody’s lips…Man’s Best Friend.

With the announcement of the new album, fan twitter spiraled. Why would Sabrina choose to end the Short n’ Sweet era so early? With 6 Grammy noms, 2 wins, 3 hit singles, and a sold-out tour with a 3rd leg on the horizon…most artists would have ridden that wave for at least another year. But as we know, Sabrina Carpenter is a Busy Woman.

“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.”

Instead of milking Short n’ Sweet dry, she’s following her heart and trusting her instincts.

This part of the article really stuck out to me. As someone getting their master’s in advertising and marketing, I can’t help but think about how risky (or smart?) it is to release another album so quickly. Traditionally, giving the public some time and space to miss you — the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” strategy — works. It also just seems like a healthy choice mentally, especially when you’re Sabrina Carpenter, living under constant public scrutiny. I can’t imagine how exhausting that would be. Like would the album cover discourse have been as strong as it was if Sabrina took a break from the public eye? Is part of the tension just Sabrina over-saturating herself in the market?

But Sabrina’s not interested in disappearing.

It kind of reminds me of that Charli XCX TikTok where she talks about extending BRAT and questioning the pressure from society to constantly reinvent herself. She likes the tension of overstaying. Sabrina seems to like that same tension. She's in a place in her life where she feels completely free to do whatever she wants — and she’s completely leaning into it.
If dropping another album just a year after the last one is what feels good to her, then why not? She doesn’t need to pause the Short n’ Sweet tour to put out Man’s Best Friend. She can do both. And she is doing both.

The article then cuts to a new spa day (shocker), where Sabrina and Angie engage in a series of cold plunges, essential oils, and peppermint snowballs. Sabrina jokes about the various wellness hacks her ex boyfriends got her into, and says that while she used to mock them, she saw the appeal after trying it herself.

She even gets into the luteal phase a bit (the post-ovulating, pre-menstruating portion of the menstrual 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.’

Notably she previously mentioned her luteal phase last October at the Times100 Next Gala so it’s nice to see it’s evidently still on her mind.

But let’s talk about idols. Throughout the article, Sabrina talks about her experience both meeting and performing with music legends like Dolly Parton and Paul Simon (who she performed a stunning duet with for SNL’s 50th Anniversary’s opening number.

On working with Dolly, who joined her on the remixed edition of Please Please Please, Sabrina said “It felt like I was looking in a weird mirror into the future,”. Dolly, who was also interviewed said, “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 of course, we can’t talk about Sabrina, without talking about ABBA. Sabrina’s love for ABBA knows no bounds, and after performing in Sweden, she even got a private tour of the ABBA museum from Björn Ulvaeus himself.

There’s a running theme of Sabrina’s disbelief of getting to stand next to and collaborate with some of the biggest idols of her life but learning to be more comfortable as she grows into herself and into her stardom.

Moving on (and out of the spa), as the pair move about the streets, Sabrina is stopped and noticed by fans, leading to a conversation about just how visible Sabrina is these days. Even her disguises are no longer foolproof, with her sister Sarah noting that “It’s so hard to disguise her, because she has such prominent eyebrows,”. While most of the time it’s charming, it can also feel intrusive.

Moving on to her time as a child star, Sabrina talks about her motivation to be a professional singer, even as a young child. Growing up without any real industry connections, she notes that while she and her parents made a lot of mistakes, she wouldn’t trade them for the world.

Being a young woman in the industry, not everybody has your best interests in mind. But Sabrina learned how to spot manipulation, and had to get good at reading people early on. Thinking back on her early work, while Sabrina finds a good amount of it cringy, she notes that even back then she was playing around and experimenting with different genres. What she did on Short n’ Sweet wasn’t new, just fully realized.

Now let’s talk about that trademark Sabrina humor. She’s not just funny to be funny…humor is her strategy. That’s what makes her writing feel sharp and clever, instead of campy.

As many young women do, Sabrina uses humor as a shield, and a way to soften her tone so as to not be perceived as difficult. But she’s done apologizing.

When talking about her public persona, Sabrina draws lines between the version of herself she displays on stage vs the version she is when she’s at home decompressing. What sticks out to me is her saying that both are real. It’s not at all uncommon for an artist to have a bold onstage persona (think Lady Gaga) that differs from who they are in private, but Sabrina says “It’s not a projection, it’s how I feel.” The confident, witty, overtly sexual version of herself isn’t a persona or a mask, it’s just a different part of her. And it coexists with the “quiet, chill” version of herself who likes to “shut the fuck up and be to myself.”

Speaking of the more serious side of Sabrina, it can be seen on many of her songs such as Lie to Girls, Sharpest Tool, Dumb and Poetic, or Don’t Smile. And she performs these songs every night on her tour, just as she performs her more explicit songs like Bed Chem and Juno. Talking about the irony of being called “too provocative,” Sabrina said:

Sabrina feels so strongly that she even circles back to this conversation on the phone with the interview weeks later. Saying:

And ain't this the truth. As someone who spends a ton of time on stan twitter (shocker) it is a constant cesspool of jobless individuals tearing down women for simply breathing wrong. With parasocial relationships running rampant on all sides, truly no one is safe.

Dolly Parton gave Sabrina advice in this regard saying:

I get the sense that Sabrina is trying to apply this in real-time, even if it’s hard to do when millions of people have an opinion about your underwear, your voice, your face, your videos. For Sabrina, pop-stardom means having to fight off video-game demons every couple hours. Her newfound status as a Main Pop Girl has awarded her with a level of scrutiny she has never endured before, with no real escape.

I’m just glad Sabrina is able to drown out the noise and hold on to her joy when the whole world is breathing down her neck.

The article ends on a perfect Brina-ism. When asked what she’d say to herself five years from now about this moment, she smiles and says:

If there's one thing this article made clear, it's that Sabrina Carpenter does not give a fuck whether you think she’s doing this pop-star thing the right way or not. And that’s why she’s thriving. She’s not waiting around for permission to evolve, to release new music, or to take up space. Whether it’s her sexual innuendos, racy album covers, or show stopping ballads, Sabrina shows us what it looks like to take full ownership of your voice, your vision, and how to do it all at your own pace. She’s in her “do whatever the fuck I want” era — and I personally am just happy to be along for the ride.