Sabrina Carpenter was just named to the TIME100 Next list for 2024. Her entry was written by another short blonde, Christina Aguilera. And that’s not their only similarity. Like Christina, Sabrina also came up through Disney. But the artist who’s been mentioned most often alongside Sabrina this year has undoubtedly been Chappell Roan, who also broke out in 2024 with her own hit songs.

 

Chappell’s been struggling lately with her meteoric rise, candidly sharing on social media that she’s overwhelmed by fame and the way it’s changed her life. Sabrina, meanwhile, appears to be thriving. And please don’t misunderstand, this is not meant to be a debate about who is better. Nobody is better and nobody is worse. This is a conversation about celebrity, and their respective paths to celebrity, how different artists deal with their sometimes sudden celebrity, how their backgrounds may or may not have helped or hindered their experience. 

 

In Sabrina’s case, she’s been on the outskirts of it a lot longer than Chappell, having signed her first recording deal with Disney at 12 and then working on camera on TV shows starting at 13, all of this in the hyper-digital age. Sabrina is 25, almost two full high school cycles younger than a previous generation of stars who were Disney kids like Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and Miley Cyrus, all of whom have had their stumbles as, really, the first cohort to not just grow up on camera and online but on social media. Before them, it was Christina and Britney, then Lindsay. As Demi has illuminated, most recently in her documentary, Child Star, the stars who emerged during in the 90s and the 2000s exposed how exploitative that system could be for young people who were totally unprepared and unprotected to do business in an industry that’s even hard on adults. Have the warning signs that those predecessors put up worked for those who would follow? 

 

Sabrina’s not yet a full year into her ascendancy. She’s just a few weeks into the biggest tour of her career so far. Short n’ Sweet is the third biggest album debut of the year, and already platinum. So it would be unwise to call it this early and say that she’s come through unscathed. That said, at least over the last few months, no jinx, she seems to be handling it rather well. Part of it, no doubt, is because of the awareness that’s been raised by those who came before her and also the lessons learned along the way as we learn, collectively, to resist the need to expect perfection from these girls and young women as they are literally forming themselves in the public eye. Sabrina, from the moment she became known at this level of fame, has never made claims to be a role model. Her songs are sexually suggestive, contradictory, she can be vulnerable but also aggressive, her lyrics are sympathetic at times, but also snarky; she’s friendly but she can also keep a grudge. Also, even though she was a child performer, big fame, headline fame, arrived not in childhood or adolescence but at 25 – and that does make a difference, at least in comparison to the “elders”, who got so famous in their teens. 

 

All of these may be key factors as she continues to build on this momentum. And what she did the other night at her show is a good example of how she’s dealing with the noise. A few days ago she was accused of lip syncing during her concerts. She clapped back in the comments… 

 

….but then… also… this: 

 

This, yes, is petty. But it’s also productive and professional. Petty, Productive, and Professional, Sabrina Carpenter is living by my three favourite Ps. 

Photo credits: Charlotte Rutherford for TIME

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