08-05-2025
Met Gala: Usher Apologizes To Sabrina Carpenter's Dad
In case you missed it, this year's Met Gala took place on Monday, and Usher was this year's surprise performance for the A-list guests that evening.
The 46-year-old singer is currently on tour, and has become renowned for a so-called 'cherry segment' during his live is where Usher picks a female audience member from the crowd and sensually feeds her cherries during his song 'There Goes My Baby.'
And Usher had his pick of celebrity women to choose from for the bit at the gala, with everybody from Zendaya to Kylie Jenner in attendance. However, it was singer Sabrina Carpenter who landed the iconic moment, which makes sense considering her reputation for proudly embracing her overt sexuality.
This arguably began when Sabrina started a tradition of ad-libbing a brand new — and normally incredibly NSFW — outro to her song 'Nonsense' every night during her Emails I Can't Send tour, which kicked off in 2022. Fun fact: The lyrics she penned for her BBC Live Lounge performance in 2023 ended up being so x-rated that the BBC opted to edit them out of her final the slang definition of 'BBC,' which is commonly used with racial connotations in pornography, Sabrina had sung: 'I'm American, I am not British / So BBC it stands for something different / This live lounge is just so lit because I'm in it.'She then poked fun at the BBC's decision to edit out her outro when she returned to the UK for their Radio 1 Big Weekend festival. This time, she cheekily sang: 'BBC said I should keep it PG / BBC I wish I had it in me / There's a double meaning if you dig deep.'
Sabrina continued to lean into her sexuality on her latest album, Short n' Sweet, which was released in August and is full of innuendos. The vibe continued on her accompanying tour, where she is dressed in custom Victoria's Secret lingerie and vintage-style babydoll nightgowns.
Also on her tour, Sabrina started a new tradition of teasing different sex positions on stage during her song 'Juno.' This led to the star being the subject of some serious online discourse earlier this year when she demonstrated the so-called Eiffel Tower sex position on stage, which involves one person getting on all fours in the middle of two others. At the time, some social media users criticized the star, calling the position 'inherently degrading" toward women.
All of this to say, Sabrina's friends, fans, and, indeed, family members are more than used to seeing the star in sexual situations, and Sabrina previously told Time that it really isn't a big deal to her relatives when they watch her shows.
Speaking about the fact that her grandparents were at her sold-out Madison Square Garden show last year, Sabrina said: 'My fans online are like: 'I can't believe she's bending over in front of her grandparents!' I'm like: 'Girl, they are not paying attention to that!' They're just like: 'I can't believe all these people are here.''
Despite this, when a sensual photo of Usher feeding Sabrina cherries at the Met emerged online on Tuesday, there was one family member who admitted to being a little uneasy with the whole thing: Sabrina's dad.
Taking to her Instagram account on Wednesday, Sabrina posted a carousel of behind-the-scenes photos from the night, which ended with a screenshot of a text message that she received from her father, David Carpenter.
David had simply sent his daughter an X link to the photo of her and Usher, writing underneath it: '? Weird.'
Sabrina cropped the screenshot so that followers couldn't see her reply, however, Usher left his response in the comment section of her Instagram post, where he simply wrote: 'Apologies Mr Carpenter 😅🍒'
Posting this text from her dad comes shortly after Sabrina opened up about how she navigated releasing a seriously brutal diss track about him cheating on her mom on the title track of her 2022 album, Emails I Can't Send.
For reference, Sabrina's parents stayed together despite David's indiscretion, and he has always remained a very big part of Sabrina and her sisters' lives. However, she did not hold back in the song, which includes the lyrics: 'You wanna discuss, ugh, you disgust me,' and 'Don't make me cuss you out / Why'd you let me down? / Don't say sorry now.'She also tells her dad that because of him, she 'can't love right' and finds herself villainizing 'nice guys' because she fears they will cheat on her.'I blame you for / Every worst that I assume,' Sabrina goes on, and in case there was any doubt over who the song is about, she sings: 'When I'm forty-five, someone calls me their wife / And he fucks our lives in one selfish night / Don't think I'll find forgiveness as fast as mom did / And, God, I love you, but you're such a dipshit.''You were all I looked up to / Now I can't even look at you,' Sabrina concludes, before laughing in a sassy outro: 'I mean, as they say in Chicago, 'He had it coming.''
And Vogue asked Sabrina about how her dad reacted to her airing the family's dirty laundry to the entire world in an interview earlier this year.
Discussing how the song sees her analyze her own relationships as a direct result of her father, Sabrina told the publication: 'Why do we end up loving the people we love later in life? That song just really made a lot of things make sense for me.'Asked about how her dad learned of the song's existence, she quipped: 'Sure as hell did not play it for him in person.''I sent it to my mother first,' Sabrina explained, before admitting: 'There were definitely feelings involved.' She also remained defiant as she pointed out: 'But you birthed me, so you kind of have to deal with the repercussions.'
As always, let me know your thoughts on all of this in the comments below!
