Sabrina Carpenter has fired back at critics unhappy with the sexual content of both her music, and her live shows, reminding everybody involved that she’s not the one making her most sexually charged songs the most popular material in her discography. Carpenter was talking to Rolling Stone for an extensive cover story, touching on pretty much every aspect of her career, when she got on the topic of people angry that her songs cover a concept that is the basis of roughly 20 percent of all songs ever written. (Or the fact that the bit from her live shows in which she adopts sexual positions while singing “Juno” is the one that always goes viral from the performances.)
“It’s always so funny to me when people complain,” Carpenter notes in the interview. “They’re like, ‘All she does is sing about this.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly you love sex. You’re obsessed with it.” Carpenter—who’s lively and fun in the fairly massive interview, talking about child stardom and the basic weirdness of being her—adds, “There’s so many more moments than the ‘Juno’ positions, but those are the ones you post every night and comment on. I can’t control that. If you come to the show, you’ll [also] hear the ballads, you’ll hear the more introspective numbers. I find irony and humor in all of that, because it seems to be a recurring theme.” In a later conversation, Carpenter expanded on the topic: “I don’t want to be pessimistic, but I truly feel like I’ve never lived in a time where women have been picked apart more, and scrutinized in every capacity. I’m not just talking about me. I’m talking about every female artist that is making art right now.”
Carpenter’s gearing up for the release of her new album Man’s Best Friend, set to arrive on August 29, almost exactly a year after her Grammy-winning breakout Short n’ Sweet. (On the topic of why she didn’t wait longer between releases, Carpenter is blunt in the interview: “If I really wanted to, I could have stretched out Short n’ Sweet much, much longer… If I’m inspired to write and make something new, I would rather do that.”)
