How Do We Compare Sabrina Carpenter’s 2025 Pop Stardom to Her 2024 Pop Stardom?
This podcast episode is part of the Billboard editorial staff’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 list. Find our accompanying Sabrina Carpenter essay here, and all the rest of our essays and podcasts related to the list here.
Sabrina Carpenter had a year for the ages in 2024, breaking through to the highest levels of pop stardom with a blockbuster album, three smash hit singles, best-selling arena tour and total cultural ubiquity, and ending up our No. 2 Greatest Pop Star of that year. Fans expected that she would likely spend 2025 still cruising off the successes of that era, but instead, she jumped right back in — kicking off another full album cycle while still in the late throes of the previous one — and confirmed herself as again not just one of the year’s great pop stars, but one of the leading lights for the entire decade.
This Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast looks at how Sabrina Carpenter ended up at No. 6 on our list — thanks to a year where she kept extended her winning streak with another chart-topping, Grammy-nominated album with at least one chart-topping, Grammy-nominated single, and more touring and media omnipresence. (You can find Meghan Mahar’s essay on Carpenter’s still-busy year here.) Today, Song vs. Song podcast co-host and Sabrina Carpenter megafan Lina Morgan joins host Andrew Unterberger to recount the giddy rush of one of the era’s great pop stars continuing to push for a second straight year of dominance, with some of her greatest releases and achievements yet, even with a couple mini-controversies clouding her latest All-Star season.
While reliving her 2025, we ask all the most pressing questions about the year in Sabrina Carpenter: Is Man’s Best Friend actually a better album than Short n’ Sweet? Is the rest of the Recording Academy really just jealous of Jack Antonoff? Are we missing out by not getting her performing at the CMA Awards? Why does she keep relegating some of her best songs to her deluxe editions? Is she setting herself up for failure with the reported upcoming Alice in Wonderland musical? (Should she be remaking Moonstruck instead?) And perhaps most importantly: As great as her 2025 was, do we still inevitably view it as being a little in the shadow of her wildly successful 2024?
Check it out above, along with a YouTube playlist of some of the greatest moments of Sabrina Carpenter’s 2025 — all of which are discussed on the pod — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for complete podcast coverage of this year’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 list!
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