These Sabrina Carpenter Facts Will Hit Like Espresso

Sabrina Carpenter Is the Ringleader of Met Gala 2025 in Pantsless Look

Sabrina Carpenter said it herself: She’s a busy woman.

And since last summer, the Grammy winner has taken the world by storm with her signature pop sound, clever innuendos, and iconic ‘60s style. This pint-sized pop star is five feet (to be exact) but continues to prove she’s living large when it comes to pop stardom. 

Born in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, to parents Elizabeth Carpenter and David Carpenter, Sabrina showed her passion for performing at an early age. In fact, she often sang “Happy Birthday” for customers at a local diner that her family frequented.

As she recently put it to Vogue, “That was kind of my first real audience.”

By age 10, Sabrina began uploading covers to YouTube, singing songs by Taylor Swift, Adele, and Christina Aguilera. And before reaching her own Disney Channel fame, she placed third in Miley Cyrus’ 2009 singing contest The Next Miley Cyrus Project. 

“After that contest ended—did not win, got to meet Miley, though, big perk,” she explained to Vogue. “I kept [singing] because I just loved it so much. I also felt like I was finding my voice through covering other people’s songs.”

After a slew of minor acting roles in shows including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Orange is the New Black, Sabrina landed her first major gig in the 2014 Disney Channel series Girl Meets World, where she starred as Maya Hart, best friend to Rowan Blanchard’s Riley alongside Ben Savage, and Danielle Fishel.

“That was my world, and that was my everything,” she told Teen Vogue of the series in August 2020. “And I was so proud to be a part of it and everything that it stood for.”

(Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for AEG)

While she’s grateful for the experience, she now feels far from her child actor persona. 

“I’m 900 inappropriate jokes away from being a Disney actor, but people still see me that way,” she admitted to Variety last August. “I’m always extremely flattered to be grouped in with the other women and girls who I’ve idolized and looked up to who came from that, but I feel very distant from it.” 

And though she also began her musical career under Disney, releasing four albums through their Hollywood Records label, in 2021, she broke her five-album contract, and later signed with Island Records a year later.

(Photo by Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for W Magazine)

There, she relaunched with Emails I Can’t Send, which featured her classic hits “Nonsense” and “Feather.” 

However, the album that cemented her spot as a main pop girl was 2024’s Short n’ Sweet. The record marked many firsts for the Pennsylvania native and even won Sabrina her first Grammys—Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Solo performance for her single off the album, “Espresso.” 

Despite being her sixth studio album, Sabrina sees Short n’ Sweet as her “second big girl album.”

“When it comes to having full creative control and being a full-fledged adult,” she told Variety in August. “I would consider this a sophomore album.” 

And, in case you were wondering, there’s no slump insight. But if you need a pick-me-up, we’re celebrating Sabrina’s 26th birthday May 11 by serving up some buzzy facts about the Grammy winner.  

(Photo by Jonathan Leibson/WireImage)

1. The youngest of three siblings, Sabrina was born on May 11, 1999—making her a Taurus—in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and she’s credited the area’s quiet nature with helping her creativity flourish, telling CBS Sunday Morning in 2024, “It gave me the ability to be bored, and from boredom came ideas.”

2. She started dance lessons at age 2 and singing at 6, prompting her to ask her parents to homeschool her so she could focus on her art. As she admitted to Vogue in March 2025, “I was like, ‘I want to audition for things.’”

3. Before landing her own Disney channel fame, the “Espresso” singer placed third in Miley Cyrus’ 2009 singing contest The Next Miley Cyrus Project. For Sabrina, the Hannah Montana star was one of her childhood idols, and meeting her was nothing short of special—though she wishes she had worn a different outfit for the occasion.

“When I was 10 years [old] it was Miley Cyrus,” she told MTV UK. “I was wearing a fedora when I met her and I regret it entirely. She had a cold but she was super sweet to me when I met her and I’ll never forget that.”

(Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)

4. The creative apple doesn’t fall far from the Carpenter family tree as her now-chiropractor mom Elizabeth Carpenter was a dancer and her dad David Carpenter was previously in a band.

5. While Sabrina’s parents may have left their performer days in the past, her aunt Nancy Cartwright certainly hasn’t. After all, the famed voice actor counts Bart Simpson among her many iconic roles.

“Isn’t that amazing?” Nancy said in a July 2024 TikTok. “Maybe you’ve known me for a little while, doing this little 10-year-old boy for 35 some years — and some of you guys for way less than that — and find out that I’m related to this superstar.”

6. Those who grew up playing Just Dance 2 may have missed Sabrina as one of the game’s featured dance coaches. Players can spot the “Juno” singer when dancing to “I’m A Gummy Bear” by Gummibär.

(Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)

7. Growing up, Christina Aguilera was one of Sabrina’s many inspirations. In fact, before bringing her out to perform “Ain’t No Other Man” and “What A Girl Wants” during the LA stop of her Short n’ Sweet tour in November 2024, the “Taste” singer called her “one of my biggest idols.”

8. Sabrina admits when she was younger, she had the hots for a certain former teen heartthrob: Zac Efron. And her obsession grew after meeting the Hairspray star at the beach when she was 12.

“He would never remember this,” she explained to W magazine in September 2024. “But I saw him and said, ‘I’m a big fan of your work!’ He gave me a hug. And I remember thinking, Oh my god—he wasn’t wearing a shirt and he gave me a hug! I was like, This is amazing. I’m never washing my body!”

9. Like Justin Bieber, the Grammy winner sparked her career by uploading covers to YouTube. She started when she was around 10, and would frequently cover songs by Christina, Taylor Swift, Adele, and The Beatles.

(Photo by John Lamparski/WireImage)

10. Sabrina is all about that collaboration as she had some help when it came to writing her debut single “Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying,” working with Meghan Trainor on the 2014 track.

“A lot of people don’t know that I wrote Sabrina Carpenter’s first song,” Meghan revealed on the I Am Paris podcast in July 2024. “It was so cute. I love those memories that I get to have now. I get to see superstars like her blow up and be like, ‘I had a song with her once.’”

11. Before she rose to fame on the Disney Channel, Sabrina, like many actors, got her start on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, appearing in the season 12 episode “Possessed,” when she was 11.

(Kelsey McNeal/Disney Channel via Getty Images)

12. Just three years later, she got her big break, starring as Maya Hart in the 2014 Disney Channel series Girl Meets World alongside Rowan Blanchard and Boy Meets World alums Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel. Reflecting on her career, the Grammy winner admires the show for what it was.

“That was my world and that was my everything,” she told Teen Vogue in 2020, “and I was so proud to be a part of it and everything that it stood for.”

13. However, her rise to fame wasn’t without its hurdles. When she was 18, Sabrina, her parents, and her manager were sued by her former music managers, Stan Rogow and Elliot Lurie for allegedly not paying them commissions after their sudden August 2014 termination. Sabrina ultimately won the case, and even wrote her 2018 single “Sue Me” about the experience.

“I was so young and I kind of equated it to the feelings of a break up and how it feels when you know they want what they can’t have anymore,” she told Variety in August 2024. “Your name is always on their tongue no matter what.”

(Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)

14. In the theater world, audiences are used to hearing the term one night only—but never two. Well, that’s exactly what happened to Sabrina in March 2020, as she was gearing up for what was supposed to be a five month run as Cady Heron in Mean Girls on Broadway.

“So I rehearsed for about three months in New York and we opened our first two nights and then Covid,” she told CBS Sunday Mornings in October 2024. “Humbled me. Humbled me very quickly. 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 silence.”

15. When traveling, Sabrina used to go by an unconventional alias: Mrs. Doubtfire. Yes, after the iconic 1993 film starring Robin Williams.

“I love getting off a plane and seeing a guy hold a sign that says Mrs. Doubtfire,” she recalled while taking the Vanity Fair Lie Detector Test in 2022. “They were always very disappointed when it was me, but then after a while people started to catch on so it’s not that anymore.”

(Photo by Gotham/WireImage)

16. The title track of her 2022 album Emails I Can’t Send is deeply personal to her family as it’s about her father’s infidelity. In it, she sings about how she now perceives “nice guys” because of him. Although, when it came time to show her dad, Sabrina let the track do the talking, explaining to Vogue in February 2025 she “sure as hell did not play it for him in person.”

17. Sabrina found herself in hot water after the release of her “Feather” music video, which was partially shot inside New York’s Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church. Officials from the place of worship later claimed they were “appalled” with the “violent and sexually provocative” nature of the music video. However, Sabrina remained unbothered in her response to the matter.

“We got approval in advance,” she told Variety in November 2023. “And Jesus was a carpenter.”

18. Her 2024 song “Please, Please, Please” was her first single to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. As she explained during a surprise appearance on vocal coach Eric Vetro’s BBC Maestro course Sing Like the Stars, the Pennsylvania-native was “so excited when I wrote that song, because it felt like a fraction of me that I had been waiting to not only write, but to put out and then perform.”

James Veysey/Shutterstock

19. Sabrina isn’t afraid to clap back. When critics on social media shared their suspicions that the “Espresso” singer was lip-syncing during her Short n’ Sweet Tour, she was quick to shoot down the claims.

“I sing live at every show 100 percent,” Sabrina declared in the comments of a video posted to TikTok in October 2024. “Would you like to speak to my audio engineers?”

20. Sabrina is an advocate for female artists owning their sexuality.

“My message has always been clear,” Sabrina said in an interview with The Sun on Sunday, “if you can’t handle a girl who is confident in her own sexuality, then don’t come to my shows.”

“Female artists have been shamed forever,” she continued. “In the noughties it was Rihanna, in the nineties it was Britney Spears, in the eighties it was Madonna—and now it’s me.”

(Originally published March 29, 2025, at 7 a.m. PT)

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