How do you decide which aspects of your personal life to include and which to leave out, especially given the intense scrutiny about your lyrics online? I think it captures a really important time in my life. Every song came from those emails or messages or whatever my way of coping was at the time. When I wrote the actual title track, I was one of the emails that I had written to myself, and I just said out loud: “That’s the name of the album!” Then every song kind of came from that place. I don’t know why, but I think it's just the fact that you have so many stories in one place, and you're expected to slap one word on it. I think the hardest thing for me has always been naming the album. How literal was the title? Did any of the lyrics actually originate as emails you couldn’t send? I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest, but if anything, I realized that there’s far more strength in vulnerability and insecurities, because they are the emotions that I think we’re all kind of scared to face-even if that doesn’t make them any less real. I was worried for a second that it wasn’t the fully confident pop record that fans who have been following me for a long time might be coming to my music for.
And that’s where these feelings started to creep in. And then once you start to get humbled by the world, it’s very easy to be like, oh, never mind, backtrack, backtrack. I think when you’re younger, it’s very easy to see the world and think that you can take it on-you have all the confidence required to do that. But honestly, I feel like the reason I couldn’t write some of those more vulnerable, some of those more insecure, some of those more forward songs before is because I just hadn’t felt those emotions. I think I’ve always been someone that likes to change things up, and no project I’ve ever made has been the same as the one before it. Was there any specific turning point for you where you thought, hey, I’m going to be a bit more candid this time around? You’ve said that in some of your previous records, there were aspects of yourself you covered up with confidence, and this record is a lot more confessional.
As was the case for so many, the pandemic forced a stark reevaluation of what mattered to Carpenter-and when it came to music, that meant tapping into a frankness and candor (mostly the product of writing songs at home alone), as well as a greater sense of autonomy as she shaped the sound and aesthetic of the record. While Emails I Can’t Send is, somewhat remarkably, her fifth album-the first four, which leaned more pop, were all released via Disney’s Hollywood Records, while Emails is her first outing since moving to Island Records early last year-there’s something about it that feels like a new beginning for the musician. “I wanted everything to feel a lot more simple and timeless,” says Carpenter of the direction for the record, citing her childhood inspirations-from Dolly Parton to Carole King to Carly Simon-as key influences.
If that seems a very literal interpretation of the title, it’s fully intentional-many of the lyrics for the 13 songs that make up the record actually began with emails that Carpenter would write during the pandemic as a kind of therapy, making the album by far her most intimate yet. On the cover of Sabrina Carpenter’s new album, Emails I Can’t Send, the musician and actor sits on her bed in a simple black dress next to a laptop, turning toward the camera as though interrupted.
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