US singer Sabrina Carpenter has said she was “led astray” during her early career, and that she was “constantly guided and misguided”.
Carpenter, 25, who scored the UK’s official song of the summer with Espresso, spoke about how she had struggled to break through with her first four albums on Disney’s Hollywood Records. in an interview with Time magazine.
The Please Please Please singer said she was “an emotional wreck” when recording her fifth album, Emails I Can’t Send, which achieved moderate success in the UK albums chart when it was released on Island Records in 2022.
Carpenter achieved worldwide fame this year, which began with the release of Espresso and continued with the launch of her sixth LP, Short N’ Sweet.
Speaking about her early years in music, Carpenter told Time: “For a long time, I was constantly guided and misguided.
“I’m so grateful for all of those times where I was led astray, because now I’m a lot more equipped going into situations where I have to trust my own instincts.”
Speaking about making her fifth record, she added: “My last album was f****** sad, straight up.
“I wanted to make sure to still be young while I’m young.
“To go through your life trying to be a little robot angel, you’re going to have a lot of regrets later.
“That’s also why during that time of my life I was a little bit of an emotional wreck.”
The Pennsylvania-born singer said after the release of Emails I Can’t Send that she realised she wanted to “make some mistakes” and be less self-critical.
After her 2024 success, Carpenter said she is now experiencing “things I dreamt of doing as a little girl”, and said she was physically sick after getting the call to perform on Saturday Night Live (SNL).
Carpenter told Time: “There were so many things I dreamt of doing as a little girl I got to do this year that felt like such a cool, sweet, little bucket-list moment for my younger self.
“I literally threw up when I found out about SNL, not to be graphic.”
She said performing at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) was also a dream come true: “I grew up watching those performances and being like, I want to do that.
“But then it all just seemed so, not even out of reach, just like I had a different plan in my head of when it was all supposed to happen.”
The singer, who opened for Taylor Swift at some dates on her Eras Tour, will now present a Netflix Christmas special called A Nonsense Christmas With Sabrina Carpenter.
Carpenter said: “It’s an hour of literal nonsense, if people are expecting boring, me singing by a tree, it’s not that.
“It’s so fun, so chaotic. There are so many guests that I’m excited about.”
The special will be released on Friday December 6.
Carpenter began her career acting in Disney Channel features such as 2016’s Adventures In Babysitting and children’s comedy series Girl Meets World, before she broke records with the singles from her sixth LP this year.
In June she was named the youngest female artist to hold the top two spots of the UK singles chart, with Please Please Please and Espresso, at number one and two respectively.
She became the first female artist in Official Charts history to spend three consecutive weeks at number one and two in the UK concurrently, with the tracks in July.