BRIT Awards winner Sabrina Carpenter pop 'feuds' and very famous ex-boyfriend

Upon sweeping the competition at the Grammy Awards last month, Sabrina Carpenter will be one of the musical acts performing at tonight’s BRIT Awards on ITV1 and ITVX.

Not only will the Espresso singer be performing during the event, but she has also won this year's prestigious Global Success, previously only presented to One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Adele and Sam Smith.

Damian Christian, Chair of the BRIT Committee for 2025, said: "Congratulations to Sabrina on winning this prestigious award. Everyone involved in the show is looking forward to her performance, which promises to be one of the highlights of the night."

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Carpenter received six nominations at the Grammy Awards and won awards for Best Pop Vocal Album while Espresso won for Best Pop Solo Performance. Outside if her currently soaring music career the star has had But who is the pop singer and how did she start her career?

Life on Disney

Sabrina Carpenter has been performing since a young age, and in 2009, she placed third in a singing contest run by singer and actress Miley Cyrus, The Next Miley Cyrus Project. She also would post YouTube videos of her performing Taylor Swift songs as a child, which have since resurfaced and gone viral on social media (Spoiler: little did she know that she’d later be supporting Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour).

Despite a clear interest in music as a youngster, Carpenter first showed up on our screens in 2011 in a guest role on the NBC drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and later made her Disney debut. She gained popularity on Disney Channel playing one of the lead characters in 'Girl Meets World' from 2014 to 2017, here she also signed with Hollywood Records (owned by Disney) and released various independent promotional singles before signing a five-album deal.

The actress then moved on to starring in Netflix films like 'Work It' released in 2020 which she also executive-produced. In the same year, she made her Broadway debut playing the lead role, Cady Heron, in the musical Mean Girls; although the show closed early due to the COVID-19 pandemic closing Broadway and never reopened.

Transcending into the world of music

Following her extremely brief stint on Broadway, in December of 2020, Carpenter was named in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in the Hollywood and entertainment category, arguably marking the start of her move out of the Disney sphere and into the public sphere.

A month later in January 2021, she announced that she had signed with Universal Music Group's Island Records and July of the following year she released her fifth studio album, Emails I Can't Send, which debuted and peaked at number 23 on the Billboard 200 and featured the iconic song Nonsense which went viral on TikTok as the singer changed the final verse depending on the location she was performing. This meant that fans across the world shared their city specific and sexually suggestive outro from their shows and ultimately catapulting her into the mainstream.

Sabrina then went on to release many catchy songs that nobody can seem to get out of their heads, including Espresso which topped the Billboard Global 200, peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, went on to win the MTV Video Music Award for Song of the Year and became the second most streamed song of the year on Spotify at 1.6 billion.

Her next two singles Please, Please, Please and Taste followed its predecessor and reached global success. According to Billboard: “She becomes the only soloist, and second to only The Beatles, to chart her initial top five hits for multiple weeks. No other act has charted three first top five hits in the region simultaneously for even one week.⁠”

Controversy and her ongoing feud with Olivia Rodrigo

Where to start with what is one of Gen Z’s first celebrity love triangles? It all started (well publicly started) in 2021 after singer Olivia Rodrigo released the song Driver’s Licence which was rumoured to be about her alleged ex-boyfriend/ Disney channel co-star, Joshua Bassett, and his girlfriend at the time, Sabrina.

Rodrigo and Bassett both starred in Disney Channel’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and although their relationship was never confirmed, fans of the show were convinced that Olivia and Joshua were more than friends.

The lyrics of the song read, “And you’re probably with that blonde girl / Who always made me doubt / She’s so much older than me,” which fans thought could apply to Sabrina.

Around a week after Rodrigo’s song was released, Joshua released his own single called Lie Lie Lie, which some fans thought was a response to Drivers License despite him shutting these rumours down.

That’s when Sabrina dropped the song Skin which made the situation a whole lot messier, with one of the first lyrics in the song being “Maybe ‘blonde’ was the only rhyme,” which could be interpreted as a direct reference to Olivia’s single.

Although, Sabrina has since set the record straight and addressed the meaning of her song.

During an appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden in 2021, she said: “I genuinely was coming from a place as a 21-year-old that is navigating her feelings and was going through a lot in my personal life.

“The reccurring theme was I was allowing people to get under my skin. I wrote from that place of knowing that there was so many different experiences that will continue to happen to me in my life where I kind of have to remind myself that people can only get to you if you allow them to and you give them that access to.”

Rodrigo told Radio.com in March 2021 that her song couldn’t possibly be about Sabrina, because they didn't know each other.

She said: “I think we’ve met once or twice in passing, but I’ve never had a conversation with her, so I don’t think I could write a song that was meaningful or emotional about somebody that I don’t know.”

A year later, Bassett was interviewed by GQ recounting the past year of his life and the release of his new music which addresses the drama.

He said: “I have a right to stand up for myself...I would see TikToks with like 50 million views and 10 million likes saying, ‘If I ever see that kid on the street, I’m going to f–king kill him.' It’s hard to see that and then be living in New York and walking down the street.”

In an interview with Variety in 2021 Rodrigo said that she didn’t expect the drama to come from her music. She explained: “I don’t really subscribe to hating other women because of boys.

“I think that’s so stupid, and I really resent that narrative that was being tossed around.”

But the pair were recently reunited at the Grammy Awards, demonstrating that their rumoured feud was no more, as a video of them hugging sent fans wild on social media.

One X user said: “Bro this is huge, this just ended one of the biggest internet wars ever”

Another added: “Love this for them, Liv was once a fan of SC during their Disney days”

This isn’t Sabrina’s only controversy, as there was a mixed reaction from the public upon releasing the music video for her single ‘Feather’ in October 2023, due to it depicting violent imagery and having been filmed at the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Brooklyn, New York.

The church’s pastor apologized for allowing the music video shoot and said he was unaware of the content of the video. Later, the singer (whose fans call themselves Carpenters) responded to the controversy by stating that advance permission had been granted and added that "Jesus was a carpenter".

Her love life and former relationship with Barry Keoghan

As previously mentioned, Sabrina Carpenter’s love life has been the topic of many conversations. Having been rumoured to have been in a relationship with Disney actors Bradley Steven Perry and Griffin Gluck and rumours later spiraled linking her to another Disney star Joshua Bassett (see the drama above). As if one love triangle wasn’t enough, in early 2023 Sabrina was linked to Shawn Mendes, famous for singing Stitches and having an on-again off-again relationship with singer Camilla Cabello.

A year later, after Sabrina and Shawn were initially linked, fans were convinced that Sabrina's most recent album Short n' Sweet was a nod to her relationship with Shawn.

On the John Mayer How’s Life podcast, Shawn Mendes seemingly referenced Sabrina Carpenter’s track Taste, which is rumoured to be about Mendes.

He said: “It’s a funny feeling to feel like you’re being written about and maybe the whole picture is not being expressed... It’s a no brainer to me that the suffering from hearing a song maybe talking about you in a way you don’t want to be talked about is not even close to the beauty of falling in love with someone for the first time.”

She then began an extremely public relationship with Barry Keoghan, the Irish actor famous for roles in films such as Saltburn and Banshees of Inisherin. The two were often seen together at multiple high-profile events, including the Met Gala and the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party, and clips of Keoghan watching Carpenter perform live on the American leg of her Short N’ Sweet Tour flooded social media. They later moved in together to a $4.4 million house in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles.

The pair dated for about a year before reportedly breaking up in December 2024. During this time, rumours began that Keoghan may have been unfaithful and started widespread speculation on social media.

Despite the intensity of the rumours, neither Keoghan nor Carpenter has addressed the alleged infidelity, leaving fans and gossip sites to try andpiece together the story from online chatter.

Later, Keoghan said in a statement posted on X: “I can only sit and take so much. My name has been dragged across the internet in ways I usually don’t respond to. I have to respond now because it’s getting to a place where there are too many lines being crossed. I can no longer let this stuff distract from my family and my work.”

He added that the comments being made were: “absolute lies, hatred, disgusting commentary about my appearance, character, how I am as a parent and every other inhumane thing you can imagine … Talking about how I was a heroin baby and how I grew up and dragging my dear mother into it also.”

According to the actor, members of the public were also “Knocking on my grannies door” and “sitting outside my baby boy’s house intimidating them. That’s crossing a line.”

What’s next for Sabrina?

After supporting Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour in 2024, Miss Carpenter announced her own Short N’ Sweet Tour which she will be bringing to the UK later this year. The European leg of the tour will begin on the 3rd of March in Dublin and end in Stockholm on the 4th of April.

She was also recently announced to perform in July in American Express’ BST Hyde Park events during the Summer alongside Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan and Jeff Lynne’s ELO to name a few. She is set to perform two nights (the first is sold out) in the London event and will be supported by artists Clairo and Beabadoobee, with the full line up yet to be announced.

The singer will be performing at The BRIT Awards which will be broadcast live tonight, Saturday, March 1, 2025, from the The O2 Arena between 8pm and 10pm on ITV1 or available live on ITVX.

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