Pop star Short n' Sweet was certified platinum within a month of its release, and not only shot three singles up to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, but also netted the 25-year-old singer two Grammys at the 67th Grammy Awards.

Yet Carpenter has also begun to draw flak from more uptight circles because – and I honestly can't believe I'm having to write about this in this day and age – her lyrics and dance moves are upsetting parents. Supposedly, Carpenter's current world tour has become a hotbed of sexually explicit performances targeted at 11-year-olds, resulting in that old Puritanical chestnut of "won't someone please think of the children?" being shouted from the battlements of conservative echo chambers nationwide, because America's systemic misogyny really needed more air time these days.

Sabrina Carpenter's Short N' Sweet Tour & Lyrics Are Under Fire For Being Inappropriate

Once Again, A Young Woman Is Being Publicly Demonized For The Audacity Of Being A Little Horny With Her Music

Carpenter's Short n' Sweet Tour ing the album of the same name began in September 2024; it continued through the middle of November '24 as she hit major US and Canadian cities, and after a four-month break, picked back up with European stops in March '25. The tour is scheduled to run until November 2025, and will return to North America in the fall. Somewhere along the way, some folks got a little twisted about the nature of the performances, which lean heavily into the flirtatious and raunchy vibe that made Short n' Sweet such a popular album.

Both the outro of "Bed Chem," where Carpenter's slumber party in a bed with her backup dancers ends suggestively as Carpenter and one male dancer disappear behind a curtain, and "Juno," where Carpenter displays a surprisingly acrobatic array of sex positions in a revealing outfit, have drawn flak for being inappropriate. So-called news outlets like AOL.com have accused her of "X-rated" performances, demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of what "X-rated" means.

X was the rating given by the MPAA to films unsuitable for children due to nominally explicit content between 1968 and 1990, when they switched to using the NC-17 rating instead due to the X, which they had not trademarked, being coopted by porn marketers. Notably, many films released during that period with X ratings, such as Midnight Cowboy or A Clockwork Orange, have been rereleased and re-rated as R films, due to a general cultural unclenching in the interceding years.

Meanwhile, posters on X, the social media outlet previously known as Twitter, have thrown fuel on the completely unnecessary fire by adding their own tepid takes on Carpenter having the audacity to incorporate her libido into her music. Completely absent from these conversations, of course, is any mention of parental agency or free speech – much like a very similar argument from the distant year of 1985.

Parental Advisory Labels Exist On Music Albums For A Reason

I Know The '80s Keep Coming Back, But We Need To Leave This Particular Argument In The Trash

If you're feeling a tickle of déjà vu at hearing that people are once again attempting to police artistic performance based on some oblique standard of puritanical ideology, it's because this has, in fact, all happened before. Just 40 years ago, Second Lady-to-be Tipper Gore led the Parents Music Resource Center on a crusade against what they saw as the corrupting influence of pop music, mostly because Gore bought her 11-year-old daughter a copy of Prince's Purple Rain without taking the time to see if it was appropriate.

The PMRC raised enough of a stink that the issue came to a US Senate Committee meeting, which saw testimony from of the Recording Industry Association of America, as well as notable musicians of the time, such as Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, wholesome folk icon John Denver, and renowned weirdo and free speech activist Frank Zappa. The result of the meeting was an eventual compromise between the PMRC, the RIAA, and the Senate that led to the creation of the notorious "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" sticker that became almost ubiquitous on CD cases in the 1990s.

The only people at fault for children having unfettered access to nominally "explicit" material are their parents.

While the decades since have seen physical media lose most of its popularity in favor of streaming platforms, those platforms usually mark explicit songs or albums in some way, or even provide settings to completely block such content. Add in the ease with which parents can find the lyrics of any given song through a simple web search, and it seems clear that at this point, the only people at fault for children having unfettered access to nominally "explicit" material are their parents.

It's Not An Artist's Job To Filter Their Content For Younger Audiences

Condoning Censorship In This Context Merely Provides Pretext For Censorship To Be Weaponized Against Marginalized People

I realize the phrase "Constitutional crisis" has been thrown around a lot lately, but here in the United States, the First Amendment is still the law of the land, and so neither public interest groups nor the government have any business telling a musician what they are and are not allowed to do with their music or their body. Unless an artist is specifically and openly creating art for children, no artist has any legal, moral, or artistic prerogative to censor themselves to any degree.

The world at large is not Paw Patrol, and no artist has any obligation to make themself more palatable…

Yes, Sabrina Carpenter was a child star for Disney, but that was years ago. She's been signed to Island Records for four years now, putting her well and truly clear of any lasting legal obligation from any prior contracts with the Mouse. The world at large is not Paw Patrol, and no artist has any obligation to make their work more palatable for any given audience. Compromising on this foundational part of the US Constitution sets a dangerous precedent in favor of politicized censorship that cannot be allowed, especially during a time of eroding civil liberties.

The upswing in criticism of a young woman like Sabrina Carpenter for her artistic sexual expression is an ideologically-driven call for censorship, plain and simple. But if anyone is to blame for children seeing or hearing sexual content here, it is their parents for failing to be involved with their children's lives. Carpenter isn't forcing her way into anyone's home to twerk in front of their toddler – so no one has any right or place to force themselves onto her stage and police her dance moves.

Sources: AOL.com