Sabrina Carpenter Dominates 2025: VMAs, Breakup Album, and Dunkin Deal | Pop Culture Roundup

Sabrina Carpenter BioSnap a weekly updated Biography.

Sabrina Carpenter’s meteoric summer of 2025 had its explosive climax this past week. Less than two weeks ago, she dropped her seventh studio album “Man’s Best Friend” on August 29, sending music critics and social media into a frenzy. The cover alone—Sabrina on all fours, hair grabbed by an unseen man—became an instant flashpoint. Critics from The New Yorker to Apple Music framed it as either a bold satire of female objectification or, as some called it, “a war between uptight virgins and godless heathens.” According to Apple Music, she herself warned in interviews this is an album for “non-pearl-clutchers.” Fan and media speculation immediately began swirling around the album’s breakup themes, with widespread consensus that they reference her split earlier this year from actor Barry Keoghan. While she teasingly acknowledged a breakup inspired the album, she never named Keoghan, only fueling the theories.

The album’s tracks “Manchild” and “Tears” have received wide attention—the latter’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show”-inspired music video caused such a stir that ABC News quipped there were “very few parts of this video we can actually show on TV.” Streaming numbers reflect the buzz: “Manchild” debuted at number one on the Hot 100 and the album’s overall sales have made it the best debut week for a female artist in 2025, per the Billboard 200.

All this controversy was fresh when Carpenter dominated the MTV Video Music Awards on September 7 at UBS Arena, walking away with three major VMAs: Best Pop Artist, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year for “Espresso.” Her performance—emerging from a manhole to sing “Tears,” backed by drag queens in protest-inspired costumes—captured headlines from Consequence and Rolling Stone for both its spectacle and its open support of trans rights.

Post-VMAs, Interview Magazine details how Carpenter threw the year’s most exclusive after-party at Brooklyn’s Refuge nightclub, with pop royalty like Tate McRae, Rosalía, Clairo, and Doja Cat celebrating the win with her. Photos and social buzz from the bash, along with Dunkin’ Donuts announcing a free Sabrina Carpenter cup promotion, kept her trending across platforms like Twitter and TikTok all week.

Amid these artistic triumphs, her business empire grows. Island Records is touting her as the pop star of the moment. Her branded “Sabrina’s Brown Sugar Shakin’ Espresso” by Dunkin’ Donuts is back in the news, and Fortnite recently featured her as the main theme for Fortnite Festival Season 8, further solidifying her as a multi-industry force.

As of today, Sabrina Carpenter is ruling the charts, news cycles, and social feeds, her creative and personal choices sparking debate and celebration in equal measure. No unconfirmed romance rumors or feuding to report, just one pop star at the top of her game and very much in control of the story being told.

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