Less than 24 hours ago, Sabrina Carpenter made her Coachella debut. Now she’s feeling a bit hungover. “Not a literal hangover,” she says, “but just, like, an energy hangover.” Working late ’cause you’re a singer—as she purrs on “Espresso,” a top contender for song of the summer—can be tough on the vocal cords. “I sound like a man more than I usually do,” she says. Despite the dry desert air, though, the 25-year-old singer seems anything but world-weary. “I thought I was really old when I was 21,” she says. “I feel now that I’m truly just getting started.”

A handful of years ago, Carpenter was the classic Disney performer, starring in shows like Girl Meets World and releasing albums through the studio’s label, Hollywood Records. Then two things happened: She moved to the decidedly more adult Island Records and her fellow Disney star Olivia Rodrigo released her barn-burning single “Drivers License,” which referenced an ex-boyfriend (allegedly Rodrigo’s High School Musical costar Joshua Bassett), who had left Rodrigo for “that blonde girl” (allegedly Carpenter). Carpenter later responded with a hit of her own, “because i liked a boy”: “I’m a homewrecker, I’m a slut / I got death threats fillin’ up semi-trucks / Tell me who I am, guess I don’t have a choice / All because I liked a boy.”

That album, 2022’s emails i can’t send, reintroduced Carpenter as both an introspective, sex-positive singer-songwriter and a “short pop bop queen,” to quote Quinta Brunson. (Carpenter stands shy of five feet.) Since then, she has found time for a romance with Saltburn star Barry Keoghan, headlined an international tour, and opened shows on Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras extravaganza. “It is magnificent to grow up idolizing someone, and then meet them, and they are all the things that you hoped that they would be,” Carpenter says of Swift. “On a personal level, she’s really been there for me, and I’m so grateful. That’s something she’s taught me really well—she has remained very human throughout all of it.”

Has Swift given her any advice about navigating public relationships? Carpenter hesitates. “I don’t think that there’s ever a how-to book on any of this stuff,” she says. She understands why fans are interested in her love life, of course: “It’s a lot of what I’m writing about, and it’s a lot of what inspires me.” But she wants her songs to be more than grist for the gossip mill. “This is my diary,” she says. “Once I put it out there, it’s for other people to interpret. I try to not tell people what a song is explicitly about. People don’t always know what’s going on inside the minds of anyone, let alone a young girl who’s navigating love and a lot of things for the first time.”

With her upcoming album, the aptly titled Short n’ Sweet, Carpenter taps into the candid energy that fans have embraced in her music. “The songs that really resonated with people were closest to my truest personality—in its silliest, most fun form or its most raw and vulnerable…. That gave me all the confidence to tap into myself a lot deeper,” Carpenter says. “I don’t think of myself as a perpetually sad person, and my last album was dealing with a specific, solidified heartbreak. For the most part, I feel very much myself again, even in the moments where I’m nervous about the future. There’s a lot more uncertainty, which is fun to write because there’s a lot of what-ifs in that. I am keeping my eyes really open.”

That must be difficult when millions of eyes are staring back. Carpenter laughs. “Yeah,” she says. “Truthfully, if I wasn’t in this industry, I don’t think I would be on social media. Maybe that surprises some people, but it doesn’t come as naturally to document my every move. I feel so much happier when I’m living in the moment.”

She’s certainly found herself in some intense ones. Carpenter filmed part of a provocative music video at a Catholic church in Brooklyn, after which the diocese reblessed the grounds and chastised the priest who had approved the production. She made her feelings about that turn of events clear when she stormed the Coachella stage in a “Jesus Was a Carpenter” shirt. During live shows, she’s made a habit of ending her song “Nonsense” with racy, off-the-cuff lyrics that sound like outtakes from Sex and the City. Carpenter has never actually seen the show but plans to: “I think it’s maybe made for me.”

She had no idea those outros would become one of her signatures, or that they’d get quite as raunchy as they have become. “Am I going to do them until I am 90? Probably not,” Carpenter says, “but I do love finding the moments that happen magically on their own.” The night before this interview, she ended her final Coachella performance with a sly reference to Keoghan: “Made his knees so weak, he had to spread mine / He’s drinkin’ my bathwater like it’s red wine.”

Had she warned her boyfriend that revelation was coming? “Oh my gosh, no,” says Carpenter. “Maybe I should do that. I guess it’s a little too late now.”

HAIR, BOB RECINE; MAKEUP, ROMY SOLEIMANI; MANICURE, NAOMI YASUDA; TAILOR, OLGA DUDNIK; SET DESIGN, VIKI RUTSCH. PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY VIEWFINDERS. FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS.