From the Archives: Sabrina Carpenter on How She Found Her Stride

From sold-out tours to the buzz of her 2026 Grammy Awards performance, we revisit Vogue Philippines’ interview with Sabrina Carpenter as she opened up about music and her journey to pop stardom.

When Sabrina Carpenter performed “Manchild” on Saturday Night Live in a bedroom setting, hairbrush in hand as a makeshift mic, one of the most common reactions online was simple: “she’s so real for that.” After all, this is an artist whose single “Manchild” recently debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and whose year-long international Short n’ Sweet Tour sold out over 30 cities across North America and Europe, including arena shows in Los Angeles, New York, and London.

Seeing Carpenter in a T-shirt and messy bun doesn’t feel out of character. It’s part of the same intimacy she introduced with Emails I Can’t Send. The album’s bedroom-set cover marked the first time audiences heard her current sound fully take shape and watched her voice solidify as an artist, especially with the viral rise of “Nonsense.”

Vogue Philippines spoke to her in 2023, the morning of her show at the New Frontier Theater in Quezon City, amid buzz about her then-viral song “nonsense” and its improv lyrics, and the moment audiences first found her settled into the identity she’s built as a performer. Below, we revisit the conversation in which the singer-songwriter talks about why she fell in love with music, how she learned to overcome her stage fright, and songs that find you when you need them the most.

Vogue Philippines: Congratulations on your album’s [emails i can’t send] recent one-year anniversary! At this stage in your career, how would you describe your musical DNA?

Sabrina Carpenter: It’s such an interesting thing. I feel like, more and more, as I get to know my voice, it’s a combination of the words that I choose when I’m expressing my feelings. My sense of humor is a huge part of the way that I deal with my feelings, so I think a lot of that came through in the album. That, and then also my voice as like a physical thing, I think, is what really sets the DNA up to feel like me more than anything. That’s why I think it’s been really special to be able to play so many genres because, at the end of the day, it’s still my voice. That felt really liberating with this one. For a long time, I had a lot of people telling me I had to kind of have to do one thing: one sound and one genre. And the thing I love the most about pop music is that it has so many different genres. So I did my very best to do that in one album, as much as I could. I probably will keep doing that, because I think that’s just something that keeps it exciting for me.

You presented a more confident facet of yourself in earlier work, but this time you allowed yourself to be more open and honest on this record. What sparked this? 

Yeah, well, I don’t think it was authentic at that time because I do think I was just a little bit more blindly confident. But it definitely felt like something that was maybe better received from me than, you know, if I were to put my kind of insecurities on a pedestal. But then after the pandemic, I think everything was really put into perspective in a lot of ways. It felt, honestly, more exciting to write the truth, whether that was positive or negative, or like pretty or ugly, or well-received or not. I think it mattered that I was kind of saying what I felt instead of trying to sugarcoat things. 

Were you terrified of releasing these very vulnerable feelings into the world?

Honestly, very, very quickly, I realized that the songs that I was, like, holding close to me for two and a half years and felt really scared for anyone to hear, that weight came off my shoulders really quickly because I think I just saw it connecting to people in ways that it didn’t connect to me. That made me feel a lot safer because I was like, ‘Oh, it’s not really just mine anymore.’ It might mean something completely different to everyone who listens to it.

What has it been like seeing your fans’ reactions firsthand? 

It’s been very, like, surreal, especially coming all the way to Asia because you can’t really force people to know every lyric, especially, you know, the deep cuts, and just seeing everybody sing along. I’m very grateful for that.

Aside from very real thoughts and feelings, what else inspires your music? 

Honestly, conversations are always kind of how my best songs happen. It’s just something that sticks out. A word sticks out, or the way a sentence is worded sticks out. I just know immediately in that moment; I write it down like it’s a song, especially if it’s invoking [a feeling]. Everyone’s laughing, and it just sparks a conversation or makes everyone emotional. I think for me that’s been really inspiring because I feel like the more you write songs, the more you’re like, ‘How do I say this in a different way?’ Then you realize, like, feelings keep changing. Even the ones that feel similar are still different in certain ways and I just feel like capturing those moments.

Emails I Can’t Send has new songs out! How has it been performing them? 

That’s just been very also exciting in a way I had never really done a deluxe album before, but it felt like, you know, I kind of feel like I never stopped writing for this album. And so it was really nice to be able to kind of see those songs come to life as I was on tour and see the fans, like, learning them as I was performing them because a lot of them were new when they first came out, but also to just see like the warm reception to people wanting to, like, hear that continuous part of my life was really, really, I don’t know, it was very heartwarming. I think in general, you know, whether one person listens or a hundred people listen, it’s a very sweet feeling when you have a lot of people in the room that are caring about the words that you’re singing and singing them back to you as if it really means something to them in their lives.

Those moments of connection onstage have been very meaningful to your fans. Elsewhere on the internet, they’re called “therapy sessions” and “confessionals.” How did the segment come to be? 

We call it like 80 different things because it started in the sense of I really wanted to cover songs on tour, but I didn’t want to do the same songs every night. And then it kind of turned into like, ‘Oh, this would be a nice way to kind of get to know my fans on a more intimate level,’ considering, you know, I overshare my entire thought and feeling on the album.

And so, for me, it’s been just a really exciting way to, one, really separate each city because I just feel like every person that I talk to is a little bit different, with them being from that specific place. It just is very memorable and indelible in a way that I’ll be able to kind of use to then choose whatever song I want to cover based off of their emotions and their feelings, and depending on if they’re in a good mood or really sad or heartbroken.

Is advice something that comes naturally to you? 

Oh my gosh, I should take my own. [Laughs] I’m definitely no licensed therapist, but when I talk to people that have gone through similar things to what I’ve been through, or just in general, like, you hear a lot of stories, and especially with women, unfortunately, I feel like this has been a pattern of seeing the way that women have been treated by men or whoever their dating. It’s been almost sweet, in a way, to be able to connect with them on that and be like, ‘Yeah, like, I’ve been there too.’

Sometimes you have to make mistakes to learn, and sometimes you can learn by trying not to repeat them or fall back on old behavior. But everyone’s so different. So I try not to be like, ‘I’m here for you, whatever you want to do. And I love you.’ It really depends on the moment. I’m pretty improv-driven when it comes to that stuff. There’s no script.

The thread of connection even extends to the internet. I recently saw someone comment, ‘Sabrina’s music always finds me when I need it’ on one of your videos. 

I think that’s just a really funny sentiment in general because I feel the same way with music that I find in the times that I find it. I’m always like ‘Oh, wow.’ Songs really find you when you need them the most. And when they capture a feeling that you’ve been trying to put into words, that’s when it finds you. The fact that any of my songs could do that for someone else is, truthfully, the reason why I love music in the first place. So it’s a very, like, wholesome feeling to look back to and be like, okay, this is why I’m doing it. This is why I love it.

I read that you were also a bit nervous about going back on tour since you haven’t gone in a while. How do you feel looking back on yourself now? 

Fears debunked. I feel like, if anything, this tour just gave this album so much more life and meaning than if I hadn’t been able to do these songs live. There’s something really magical about certain people, like just feel emotions in the present moment as opposed to, like, you know, when people are listening in their headphones by themselves. Like, that’s one way to listen to music, but when you’re all together with a bunch of strangers, but you all come together because of like one song you love or one you know, artists you love—I mean, in that being me in those moments is a very, very surreal feeling. So yeah, not scared anymore. In fact, I’m so unafraid of the stage that I’ve become a little too comfortable out there. Sometimes I say stuff that I shouldn’t, do stuff I shouldn’t, but, if anything, that’s the cool part for me—it’s that, you know, when my fans do come to the show they get to see, like, me for who I am and not like me posed on Instagram in a certain way or in an outfit. It just feels more real and authentic, and it’s such a hard thing to capture on social media, so that’s why it’s been really… I don’t know, for me, like almost… What’s the word I’m looking for? So reassuring that I can be myself and that’s accepted as opposed to trying to put something on and feeling like I have to keep up with like an act or something.

I think that’s what fans really resonate with the most, too—that sense of vulnerability.

I think, at this point, I’m almost, like, too far in to look back. And I’m a Taurus so I don’t really know if that means anything, but I do believe it means that, like, there’s a sense of being stuck in our ways. And I think, for me at least, that just means being whoever I am in that moment that I need to be or have to be and yeah, I think that honesty and sincerity is something that I hope to keep up for the rest of my life. And if I’d ever feel like I’m not being sincere, I’m probably just hungry.

You’re going on tour with Taylor Swift next month! How did you find out about it? And how did you feel? 

[Laughs] She texted me, which is a crazy, crazy sentence. She’s such a funny texter too. She uses, like, her Bitmoji and so, like, whenever I, like, get her Bitmoji, I’m like ‘Yo,’ [Laughs] ‘What is going on?’ There’s a lot of exclamation points exchanged, lots of capital letters. It still doesn’t really feel real because I feel like that’s somebody that I’ve truly looked up to since I was, you know, eight, seven years old. And I remember where I was when I heard, you know, “Our Song” for the first time. And so just to like, see that kind of journey has been very surreal. I’m very grateful to her and like what an iconic tour to be part of in any capacity. It’s just very, very exciting.

Last question—looking back, if you could give yourself any advice, perhaps to the you who had just started writing the album, what would you tell yourself? 

That’s such a good question. It’d probably be not to hold back. So I think for a second I was finding how comfortable I was with sharing and then oversharing and then just experimenting until I allowed myself to find what it is that I really, really loved and gravitated towards. And then also not to, like, let too many opinions weigh into my mind because I feel like that’s the one thing where you look back, and you’re like ‘Oh, like no one could have predicted that.’ You know, even though someone said they didn’t love this song, this song did really well, or even when someone said they loved this song, it didn’t do as well compared to another song. So I don’t think there’s really anyone that you should trust more than yourself because, at the end of the day, I have to sing it for 100,000 years.