Sabrina Carpenter Comments on Taylor Swift’s Influence: ‘She’s So Composed, She’s Graceful, She’s Gracious’

Sabrina Carpenter shared Taylor Swift‘s massive stage before embarking on her own fall arena tour. The Short n’ Sweet singer is now sharing what it’s like to be in the pop idol’s presence, and to have her support, in a new interview with CBS News Sunday Morning.

“You just watch her, like, walk in a room and it’s very easy to understand that she’s so composed, she’s graceful, she’s gracious,” Carpenter, who was one of Swift’s Eras Tour openers, said in the CBS segment that aired Sunday morning (Oct. 6).

Asked about the advice Swift has given her on handling fame, the 25-year-old artist explained, “I wouldn’t say it’s, like, a verbal thing as much as just, like, she’s very supportive of me and knows who I am as a person and is very supportive of that. So I’m grateful for that.”

Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet album returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart dated Oct. 12, Billboard reported Sunday afternoon, making it four nonconsecutive weeks that the set has topped the list since its release on Aug. 23.

On the Hot 100, Carpenter is the first artist this decade to spend five weeks with at least three simultaneous top 10s on the chart, with hit singles “Espresso,” “Please, Please Please” and “Taste” all securing spots.

It’s quite the feat for the singer-songwriter who’s been working on her craft since she was a kid, uploading YouTube videos of herself covering songs like Swift’s before landing a record deal and the lead role on the Disney Channel’s Girl Meets World as a teen.

On the fame that comes with the success she’s experiencing now, Carpenter noted, “I think, again, if we’re talking about how to deal with it all, I think everyone has such an individual, unique experience that there’s no kind of blanket statement or advice on how to not let it rattle you. You just kind of have to exist and figure out what you can handle and what you don’t want to deal with.”

“You find the people that you surround yourself with that make you feel safe and go from there,” she added.

Watch Carpenter’s CBS News Sunday Morning interview clip below. She’s currently on the road in North America for the Short n’ Sweet Tour, with dates scheduled through mid-November. Carpenter will bring the show to Europe in March 2025.

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.

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.