FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Carpenter for Teen Vogue
Part Sixty-Seven: Sabrina Carpenter
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THERE are some tremendous women in the industry…
who are putting out music that will be remembered years from now. Shining lights and leading artists who, whilst not superstars or hugely influential now, will definitely earn that status very soon. Sabrina Carpenter is someone who I have been following for a while. She is only twenty-two - so there are many years ahead of her. I am going to end with a playlist of her best work. Before that, there are a couple of interviews that allow us greater understanding concerning the American actor and musician. Wikipedia’s biography of her provides some nice overview:
“Sabrina Annlynn Carpenter (born May 11, 1999) is an American singer and actress. Carpenter made her acting debut with an appearance in the crime series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and first received recognition for her recurring role as the young version of Chloe Goodwin in the television series The Goodwin Games. She then had her breakthrough starring as Maya Hart in the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World from 2014 to 2017. Carpenter has starred in the feature films Horns (2013) and The Hate U Give (2018) and starred as Jenny in the Disney Channel Original Movie Adventures in Babysitting (2016). As a voice actress, she had a recurring role as Princess Vivian in the Disney Channel animated series Sofia the First from 2013 to 2018, and she voiced Melissa Chase on the Disney XD animated series Milo Murphy's Law from 2016 to 2019.
In 2014, Carpenter was signed to Hollywood Records, and her debut EP, Can't Blame a Girl for Trying, and debut single of the same name were released in the same year. She released her debut album, Eyes Wide Open, in 2015 and has since released another three studio albums: Evolution (2016), Singular: Act I (2018), and Singular: Act II (2019). After departing from Hollywood Records, Carpenter was signed by Island Records, and she released her first song with the label, "Skin", on January 22, 2021”.
Her fantastic new single, Skinny Dipping, was released a couple of weeks ago. I am interested in young Pop artists; those who will mould the mainstream and define Pop in years to come. Carpenter might not be to everyone’s tastes, but I think that she is such an interesting talent with a great sound. Owing a little to Taylor Swift, songs like Skinny Dipping are full of light and sweetness. There is depth to the songwriting, combined with production that is polished but not too much so. The first interview that I want to source from is Cosmpolitan’s from last year. This was at a point in the pandemic when there was lockdown and uncertainty regarding when live music would return. The situation seemed as fraught in the U.S. as it did anywhere. Sabrina Carpenter comes across as a hugely engaging and mature person:
“Sabrina seems like the type of girl who’s always surrounded by people. Friends who come over to use that swing or sit with her and listen to those records or watch her create covers on the electric piano in the other corner. There is a friend in the corner, actually, sort of: a cardboard cutout of Sabrina’s friend and Work It costar Liza Koshy. Liza gave it to Sabrina for her birthday, because what every girl’s bedroom needs is a life-size replica of her best friend. Especially now, in the midst of this global pandemic, when entertaining is mostly just a memory.
Sabrina seems like the type of girl who’s always surrounded by people. Friends who come over to use that swing or sit with her and listen to those records or watch her create covers on the electric piano in the other corner. There is a friend in the corner, actually, sort of: a cardboard cutout of Sabrina’s friend and Work It costar Liza Koshy. Liza gave it to Sabrina for her birthday, because what every girl’s bedroom needs is a life-size replica of her best friend. Especially now, in the midst of this global pandemic, when entertaining is mostly just a memory.
And then there were all the other things that happened while she was dealing with the pandemic too. Her grandfather passed away in April, which meant her grandmother moved in with her and her family. She turned 21 in May, and celebrating a major milestone birthday in quarantine brought on its own wave of feelings. Then July marked the one-year anniversary of the death of her friend Cameron Boyce. So all the things that would have been incredibly hard to go through already got even harder when added to a global health crisis. Basically, she’s been going through a lot.
“It’s a crazy overwhelming feeling,” Sabrina says, slowly and with emphasis on each word. “It’s sort of like we have to go back to the basics right now, just the core things that make us feel loved and happy. We’re not distracted by all the things in the world and all the cool things that we can be doing. We’re very much forced to see the reality right now”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Carpenter for Teen Vogue
I am going to bring things relatively up to date and source a great Teen Vogue interview from earlier this year. I am not sure whether there are plans for an album soon. I think her newest tracks are the best we have heard from Carpenter. She is going to keep on developing as an artist. There are sections from the Teen Vogue interview that caught my eye:
“It’ll be a Wednesday when Sabrina Carpenter will hear her ex’s name and drink order at a coffee shop and look up. They’ll make cordial small talk, Sabrina will share a casual update on her sister: “Shannon’s being Shannon.” And suddenly, years after a tumultuous end, they’ll no longer be swimming on the edge of the cliff they’d soon spill over. Instead, they’ll just be existing among hindsight and therapy and time, splashing around in water under the bridge.
The moving image is from Sabrina’s newest single, “Skinny Dipping,” a first taste of her forthcoming album — which will also be her first on Island Records, a deal she signed in January of this year after four albums through Disney’s Hollywood Records. But “Skinny Dipping” is also a manifestation of sorts, a wish for future peace after a breakup.
“I didn’t feel in that moment that I was at a place where I could literally be skinny dipping in water under the bridge,” Sabrina tells Teen Vogue. “I didn’t feel like I was healed and fully out of a place where I didn’t hold any anger or resentment.” Instead, writing with collaborators Julia Michaels and JP Saxe, she dreamed up a scenario where she had worked through those feelings.
“This was when i first got to my apartment for the summer in New York, it had a fire escape which i was pretty excited about as you can see here.”
She explains all of this while sitting in a different café, Martha’s Country Bakery in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, where she’s spent most of her summer. It’s 11 a.m., and we’re splitting a piece of her cake of choice from the popular (though deserted in the morning) dessert destination. The slice is called the Napoleon, a pastry cake with layers of cream and fresh berries. Breakfast cake, we joke. She’s wearing a cropped t-shirt she cut herself, printed with the face of her friend and creative partner, the actress Danielle Fishel, as her character Topanga from Boy Meets World.
Sabrina starred in the Disney Channel spinoff Girl Meets World for three seasons as the confident, chaotic Maya Hart, best friend to Cory and Topanga’s daughter Riley Matthews (Rowan Blanchard). The show ran from 2014-2017 and was her breakout acting role, leading to more Disney parts and bigger films like The Hate U Give and Netflix’s 2020 dance comedy Work It. But music was the beginning.
As a homeschooled kid growing up in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, she posted YouTube covers of pop songs; she told Marie Claire that her dad built her a purple recording studio in her childhood home at age 10. She released her first single “Fall Apart” when she was only 11, signed her first record deal at 12. Reflecting on that first song, she’s disbelieving, a bit self-deprecating. “You’ve seen those TikToks where people are talking to their 10 year old self? And they’re like, ‘Do we marry Justin Bieber? No, we find someone else,’” she laughs, before turning more introspective. “Listening to that song specifically — which I don’t recommend anyone does, but since you already have — I really don’t think at 10 years old I realized what songwriting would become to me, and how much it would bring me back to sanity.”
Each of her album eras — Eyes Wide Open, Evolution, Singular: Act 1 and Act II — has seen her wield more creative control as she searched for her own sound in a crowded pop landscape. Her next album is “as close” to total control as she can get, she says, without literally playing the drums. She backtracks — “Actually I do play the drums on one song, so that’s a lie.” Taking back that power has made her cognizant of what she gave up early on. “I signed with my first label when I was 12. Like I don’t know what the f*ck I’m doing at 12,” she says. “I was just like, I wanna make music, I wanna perform and be on stages. That’s all I knew. Then I found myself in a situation where it was very tricky to be who I wanted to be, and I didn’t realize I would be giving away a lot of that freedom at such a young age … If I could go back in time, I don’t know if I would have released an album [around age] 13, if I’m being honest with you.”
She recalls being sent to songwriting camps at age 17, in rooms where she was expected to say a few words to inspire writers and then duck out for lunch. “They didn’t realize I was the person that was gonna get there 30 minutes before everybody, and then not leave until an hour after, and be cutting vocals and backgrounds for hours,” she says. “Whatever it takes.”
The album she’s wrapping up now, her first since 2019, was created with just two producers, John Ryan (best known for working with One Direction) and Leroy Clampitt (Ashe, Phoebe Ryan, Justin Bieber). Her playlist while writing the album is stocked with songwriters: Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton, The Beach Boys, Imogen Heap, Carole King, Taylor Swift, Joni Mitchell. She pulled in her friends Julia and JP — who she recently called her “musical mom ‘n dad” — as co-writers, handwriting a contract to make sure they made time to finish the album together in New York this past summer. It was a more intentional album-making experience. Previously, she’d collect songs scattered over days, weeks, months until an album came together. Now, there was time to take risks and hole up in the studio with delivery food and champagne, to take to the roof when they needed to look out at the city for inspiration”.
I will wrap it up there. I am keen for people to check out Sabrina Carpenter’s music and seek out what she has done so far. I think that there will be an album or something similar later in the year. A very talented young artist who is showing she has the potential to be a long-lasting and hugely influential person. If you have not discovered the music of Sabrina Carpenter, then go and allow some time…
TO make up for lost time.