Music

Sabrina Carpenter is TIME‘s latest cover star, earning a place among the publication’s 100 Next list with a cosign from another short-statured pop superstar: Christina Aguilera.
In addition to a cover story published Wednesday (Oct. 2), the 25-year-old “Espresso” singer was honored with a brief tribute penned by Xtina. “She may claim to be short and sweet, but never underestimate the mighty power behind Sabrina Carpenter’s talent,” the Burlesque star wrote. “As a fellow 5-ft. female with a similar working-­adolescent Disney history, I firsthand recognize and respect what it takes to maintain clarity while delivering within the demands of this business.”

“While she is at the tender age of 25, I realize our symbolic, full-circle connection, as my own [self-titled] debut album turns 25 this same year,” Aguilera continued. “As exciting generations of pop princesses continue to emerge, I feel adoration and protectiveness, knowing the journey at hand and ahead.”

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The article comes just a couple weeks after Carpenter and the “Beautiful” vocalist met up mid-September, filming a TikTok together in which the Girl Meets World alum joked that she was Aguilera’s “favorite” child. The pair also teamed up for Xtina’s recent Spotify Anniversaries episode around the same time, singing “What a Girl Wants” as a duet.

Aguilera also came up in Carpenter’s cover story interview with TIME, with the “Please Please Please” hitmaker opening up about owning her sexuality while following in the footsteps of pop icons such as Xtina and Britney Spears. “You’ll still get the occasional mother that has a strong opinion on how you should be dressing,” she told the publication.

“And to that I just say, don’t come to the show and that’s OK,” continued Carpenter, who often sings about sex in her music and incorporates a few NSFW elements into her live shows. “It’s unfortunate that it’s ever been something to criticize, because truthfully, the scariest thing in the world is getting up on a stage in front of that many people and having to perform as if it’s nothing. If the one thing that helps you do that is the way you feel comfortable dressing, then that’s what you’ve got to do.”

See Carpenter’s TIME cover below.

Charli XCX gets the joke. The “360” singer stopped by Howard Stern’s SiriusXM channel on Wednesday morning (Oct. 2) for her first-ever visit to the King of All Media’s morning show, where the host asked her if she was offended by Bowen Yang‘s over-the-top spoof of her Brat Summer vibe during a sketch on Saturday’s 50th season premiere episode.
“Oh, no, no, no. I think SNL is iconic and Troye and I we had an inkling it was coming and so we were very excited about it,” she said of Sweat Tour co-headliner singer Troye Sivan. “I love Bowen and I honestly think he did a great job. I was very impressed with the hair texture, actually. I thought it was a really good wig. It was good, it was cool.”

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Yang, indeed, did rock a killer wavy hairpiece for the bit that featured him as Charli hosting a political-themed talk show alongside Sarah Sherman’s ab-tastic house DJ Sivan. The bit opened with Yang’s Charli introducing her Talk Talk Show — a reference to one of the songs on Charli’s Brat album — before moving on to the so Charli segment “brat or nat.”

The loving tribute included Yang’s Charli cheekily asking cast member Chloe Fineman’s CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins if she’d ever done ketamine on a set that was the same lime green color as the cover of the singer’s sixth album.

Elsewhere in her chat with Stern, Charli talked about her breakthrough a cappella performance of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” as a four-year-old on a cruise with her parents as well as revealing that she’s never met one of her absolute musical north stars: Britney Spears. She did, however, say she went to see the singer’s Las Vegas show years ago and was convinced that though Brit didn’t know she was there, she suspected she’d spotted her when the “Toxic” star spoke in a British accent during the set, only to find out from a friend that Spears does that “all the time.”

After also expressing her love for the Spice Girls, Charli surprised Stern by revealing that she thinks late punk godhead Lou Reed is “the greatest artist of all time. I think lyrically he is just… I dunno, he is just on this other level. Like you said, people probably would never associate me and him together, but I think his lyrics are so conversational,” she said.

“He paints a picture of what is in front of him, whether it’s someone pulling a rose out of a garbage can in New York, or the scene at Max’s,” she said of the famed Max’s Kansas City bar that was a gathering place of New York’s underground music, poetry and arts scene in the late 1960s and 1970s. “He truly paints this really specific picture referencing Candy and Jackie and all of these people who maybe the listener doesn’t necessarily know who he’s talking about, but you can kind of go and read [about]… I think that was something that was really inspiring to me on Brat, to kind of paint this really specific picture of people in my life, places that I go to in this very conversational way he does.”

Charlie and Sivan rocked New York’s Madison Square Garden last week on their joint tour, where she was joined by surprise guests Lorde and Addison Rae. The outing rolls on tonight with a show at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.