Until she joined Taylor Swift on the South American leg of the Eras tour earlier this summer, Sabrina Carpenter had never really broken into the mainstream in the way she perhaps deserved. Sure, her raunchy “Nonsense” outros trended on Tiktok for a while, to some she was known as the star of Disney’s Girl Meets World, and to a very select few she was the short-lived Cady Heron in Broadway’s Mean Girls. But to most of the country, she was merely the other woman in the Olivia Rodrigo-Joshua Bassett love triangle, a position she never asked for in the first place and explores throughout her 2022 album emails i can’t send.
Not anymore. Carpenter has blown up over the past few months thanks to the Eras Tour’s worldwide platform, her fun, feminine sound and stage presence, her Polly Pocket-esque wardrobe, and, last but not least, the Catholic Church. No, one of the world’s stuffiest institutions didn’t intentionally promote a singer who once delivered the lines, “Water ain’t the only thing I swallow/I really wish I could play here tomorrow/My favorite city is Chicago.” Quite the opposite, actually.
Last month, Carpenter released her music video for the song “Feather,” which sees the star killing a number of men who have wronged her and dancing in front of their pastel-colored coffins. The coffin part happens in a Roman Catholic church. In this writer’s opinion, the video rules. To the church, not so much. Immediately after the video dropped, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn issued a statement saying they were “appalled” at these goings-on and that proper filming procedures had not been followed (per Associated Press). They proceeded to strip the pastor in charge of his administrative duties and hold a special Mass to “restore the sanctity of this church and repair the harm.”
But for Carpenter, the whole scandal just added to her new, cool girl persona. “We got approval in advance,” the singer told Variety of the incident, “and Jesus was a carpenter.” In this writer’s opinion, anyone who can pen a line this good more than deserves a spot in the Mount Rushmore of pop royalty. Amen, Sabrina.