Sabrina Carpenter has responded to claims that her live shows are “offensive”.
Earlier this week, Eighties hitmaker Pete Waterman made headlines for his remarks that the “Espresso” singer, 25, is “offensive” for dressing as “a little girl”.
The 78-year-old said: “They’ve won all of their freedoms and their rights, women. They fought for everything they’ve got, and now they’re throwing it away, is the way I would look at it.
“It’s just crazy. If you’re asking to be respected, don’t come on in a G-string.”
Her lyrics were dismissed by Waterman’s collaborator Mike Stock, meanwhile as “lazy” and overly sexualised.
In a new interview with The Sun on Sunday, Carpenter’s response was simple: “My message has always been clear – if you can’t handle a girl who is confident in her own sexuality, then don’t come to my shows.”
She added that women being judged on their appearance “isn’t something new”, saying: “Female artists have been shamed forever. In the Noughties it was Rihanna, in the Nineties it was Britney Spears, in the Eighties it was Madonna – and now it’s me.
“It’s essentially saying that female performers should not be able to embrace their sexuality in their lyrics, in the way we dress, in the way we perform.
“It is totally regressive. It’s like those who want to shame don’t make comments when I talk about self-care or body positivity or heartbreak, which are all normal things a 25-year-old goes through.
“They just want to talk about the sexual side of my performances.”
Stock and Waterman, along with Matt Aitken, are part of a trio of pop producers who penned many of the enduring hits of the 1980s and 1990s and helped to launch the careers of some of music’s biggest stars including Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley and Bananarama.
Carpenter’s sixth album, the Grammy-nominated Short n’ Sweet, became her first to debut at No 1 on the Billboard 200, and it produced the top-three Hot 100 singles “Espresso”, “Please Please Please” and “Taste”.
In a four-star review of the album for The Independent, critic Helen Brown wrote that the record “confidently hair-flips its way between TikTok pop, yacht rock, and country”.
Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet Tour recommences in Dublin on 3 March. It will arrive in London on 8 March and finishes in Stockholm on 4 April.
