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Sabrina Carpenter on “Short n’ Sweet”
At just over five feet tall, Sabrina Carpenter is one of the giants of the pop world. Her latest album, “Short n’ Sweet,” debuted at #1. But that’s not the half of it: Her first three singles – “Espresso,” “Please Please Please” and “Taste” – all hit the top five of Billboard’s Hot 100 in the same week. The only other music act to do that was The Beatles back in 1964.
It’s a testament to her talent, and the will to keep going no matter what.
“Sunday Morning” met Carpenter at a rehearsal studio in rural Pennsylvania, not far from where she grew up – a place to practice her stage show in relative privacy away from the paparazzi. She said it feels like home to her: “The air is better, the water’s better, the bread’s better.”
Her new concert stage is a giant dollhouse, with a piano, a fireplace, a bedroom, and a long, curved staircase that she navigates in heels.
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There’s also an army of support people behind the scenes, but the show itself is all Sabrina. Beneath all the frilly outfits is a backbone of steel.
Asked what might be the biggest misconception about her, Carpenter laughed, “How much time do we have? I think a misperception is that I don’t write my music. I think a lot of people think because I have, you know, a producer and co-writers that I love, that I’m sitting in the room on my phone, not writing songs.”
In fact, she wrote or co-wrote all of her recent songs.
At just 25, with her clever lyrics playing everywhere and her face on the image head to toe on the latest issue of Time magazine, Sabrina Carpenter seems to have just exploded on the music scene. But it took her more than a decade to get here.
She’s one of four girls born to Elizabeth and David Carpenter, and young Sabrina showed a love of music early on. “They never told me to ‘stop singing,'” she said. “And I think that, like, psychologically, really probably helped me.”
She started posting singing videos on YouTube, and then at 13 she earned a part in the Disney Channel’s “Girl Meets World.” She also kept making music, and by 2020 had already recorded four albums when she landed the lead role in Tina Fey’s Broadway hit, “Mean Girls.” It would be a turning point in her career, but not like she’d hoped.
“I rehearsed for about three months in New York, and we opened our first two nights, and then COVID humbled me – humbled me very quickly!” she laughed. “Like, I was sent home, and just was like, Wow. I feel like I could do eight shows a week, you know, and I’ve been training for it. And now it’s just, like, silence.”
But the silence was a blessing. Hunkered down at home, Carpenter crafted her deeply personal album, “Emails I Can’t Send.” And when it was released in 2022 it launched her to the next level of fame.
“Nonsense,” from the album “Emails I Can’t Send”:
She’s learned to live her life under the celebrity microscope. For the past year she’s been dating Irish actor Barry Keoghan, who made a splash in the Oscar-nominated “Banshees of Inisherin.” Last spring Carpenter cast Keoghan as her no-good boyfriend in the music video for her hit “Please Please Please”:
Please please please don’t prove I’m right
Please please please
Don’t bring me to tears when I just did my makeup so nice
Despite a wish to keep her personal life personal, Carpenter credited her “not-even-biased opinion” for casting Keoghan: “I was like, ‘Who’s the greatest actor that I can find for this music video?’ And he was next to me in a chair. And he was so excited about it, and he likes the song, which is great, he’s a fan of the song. He does like my music a lot, yeah.”
He’s not alone. Her shows now sell out night after night, something she got a taste of when she opened for Taylor Swift’s blockbuster “Eras” tour last year.
It’s a lot for any 25-year-old, and through it all she credits her mother for helping keep herself grounded. “She’s so selfless, and has been that way her whole life with me and my sisters,” Carpenter said. “I love her so much!”
Asked for the best advice her mom gave her, Carpenter replied, “Not to take everything so seriously all the time. So, that’s been really helpful. … My mom’s such a positive person. I don’t think she’s ever made me feel like what I was doing was too much, ever.”
Carpenter is now eight shows into an international tour, and as her profile keeps growing, so does the pressure. “There’s always gonna be stress, there’s always going to be anxiety, there’s always gonna be drama,” she said. “But for me, like, being able to laugh about it is really important. So, I would say that. And also caffeine. Because without caffeine, I wouldn’t be doing this interview right now!”
Sabrina Carpenter performs “Espresso”:
You can stream the Sabrina Carpenter album “Short n’ Sweet” by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
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Sen. Thom Tillis says “the scope” of Helene damage in North Carolina “is more like Katrina”
As recovery missions and repairs continue in North Carolina more than a week after Hurricane Helene carved a path of devastation through the western part of the state, the state’s Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called for more resources to bolster the relief effort and likened the damage to Hurricane Katrina’s mark on Louisiana in 2005.
“This is unlike anything that we’ve seen in this state,” Tillis told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday morning. “We need increased attention. We need to continue to increase the surge of federal resources.”
Hurricane Helene ripped through the Southeast U.S. after making landfall in Florida on Sept. 26 as a powerful Category 4 storm. Helene brought heavy rain and catastrophic flooding to communities across multiple states, including Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, with North Carolina bearing the brunt of the destruction. Officials previously said hundreds of roads in western North Carolina were washed out and inaccessible after the storm, hampering rescue operations, and several highways were blocked by mudslides.
Tillis said Sunday that most roads in the region likely remained closed due to flooding and debris. Water, electricity and other essential services still have not been fully restored.
“The scope of this storm is more like Katrina,” he said. “It may look like a flood to the outside observer, but again, this is a landmass roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts, with damage distributed throughout. We have to get maximum resources on the ground immediately to finish rescue operations.”
Hurricane Katrina left more than 1,000 people dead after it slammed into Louisiana’s Gulf Coast in August 2005, flooding neighborhoods and destroying infrastructure in and around New Orleans as well as in parts of the surrounding region. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. in the last 50 years, and the costliest storm on record.
The death toll from Hurricane Helene is at least 229, CBS News has confirmed, with at least 116 of those deaths reported in North Carolina alone. Officials have said they expect the death toll to continue to rise as recovery efforts were ongoing, and a spokesperson for the police department in Asheville told CBS News Friday their officers were “actively working 75 cases of missing persons.”
On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Transportation released $100 million in emergency funds for North Carolina to rebuild the roads and bridges damaged by the hurricane.
“We are providing this initial round of funding so there’s no delay getting roads repaired and reopened, and re-establishing critical routes,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris administration will be with North Carolina every step of the way, and today’s emergency funding to help get transportation networks back up and running safely will be followed by additional federal resources.”
President Biden previously announced that the federal government would cover “100%” of costs for debris removal and emergency protective measures in North Carolina for six months.
With North Carolina leaders working with a number of relief agencies to deal with the aftermath of the storm, Tillis urged federal officials to ramp up the resources being funneled into the state’s hardest-hit areas. The senator also addressed a surge in conspiracy theories and misinformation about the Biden Administration’s disaster response, which have been fueled by Republican political figures like former President Donald Trump.
Trump falsely claimed that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the November presidential election, were diverting funds from Federal Emergency Management Agency that would support the relief effort in North Carolina toward initiatives for immigrants. He also said baselessly that the administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, were withholding funds because many communities that were hit hardest are predominantly Republican. Elon Musk has shared false claims about FEMA, too.
“Many of these observations are not even from people on the ground,” Tillis said of those claims. “I believe that we have to stay focused on rescue operations, recovery operations, clearing operations, and we don’t need any of these distractions on the ground. It’s at the expense of the hard-working first responders and people that are just trying to recover their lives.”
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