Counterpoint, a record store in Los Angeles’ Franklin Village, is probably not the first place one would expect to find Sabrina Carpenter on a sunny Monday afternoon — flipping through a stack of vintage Playboys, no less. The chart-dominating singer-songwriter is sipping a Yerba Mate while she oohs and ahhs at the blond bombshells of various yesteryears when a bright-blue cover featuring a pouty-faced model catches her eye.
“I love the faces of the ’60s and ’90s — old Hollywood, flirty and fun,” Carpenter says. “This is definitely the vibe of my album.”
Surely, she must know she has the face too, right? The instant-vintage portraits accompanying her two smash summer singles, “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” have been ubiquitous since the former’s release in April, and she channels a similar Marilyn Monroe-inspired allure on the cover of her forthcoming album, “Short n’ Sweet,” due Aug. 23, as well as in the imagery for her first North American arena tour, which starts next month.
She’s just returned from a hectic promotional jaunt through Europe, but today Carpenter seems dead set on digging through every aisle of this vinyl emporium. After pausing on Charli XCX’s “Brat” (“Love it!”), Olivia Newton-John’s “Soul Kiss” and Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” she spies Connie Francis’ 1958 album “Who’s Sorry Now?”
“Connie Francis is amazing and super underrated,” she says, admiring the cover photo. “Oh, my God, she’s beautiful. She’s really serving.” On July 2, 1960, a 21-year-old Francis became the first female artist to land a No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.” Almost exactly 64 years later, on June 29, 2024, the 25-year-old Carpenter achieved her first No. 1 with “Please Please Please,” after reaching No. 3 the previous week with “Espresso” (which may have missed the top spot, but on Aug. 5 became the third-fastest song to reach a billion streams on Spotify). The hoped for but unexpectedly stratospheric chart success of the singles has built anticipation for her album to a near fever pitch.
“I’m so happy I finished this album before any of the songs came out,” Carpenter says. “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.”
The songs show a seasoning that comes with experience, particularly “Please Please Please” and its hilarious video, which stars her real-life paramour, actor Barry Keoghan, and is written from the perspective of a woman who loves her man but is just about done with his bullshit. For all the pop frothiness of the songs and the candy-flossed imagery, there’s a savvy undercurrent of sass and grit: Both “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” have prominent f-bombs and innuendos in the lyrics.
But maybe not that much sass and grit. After a pause, Carpenter preemptively adds with a smile, “I’m not posing for Playboy — just to be clear.”
While Carpenter was considered a Disney princess for years, her transition from child actor to pop star — a perilous leap that has felled many before her — has been slow, steady and intentional. She admits that she sometimes feels like a new artist, even though she’s about to release her sixth album.
Born and raised in Quakertown, Pa., Carpenter moved to California with her family as a preteen. Her two older sisters, Shannon and Sarah, attended performing arts high schools and introduced her to an early influence — the 2008 musical “13,” starring a pre-Nickelodeon Ariana Grande (whom Carpenter would open for just a few years later). Carpenter showed precocious talent, and her family began taking her to auditions.