Britney Spears doesn’t “understand” Sabrina Carpenter’s “weird” VMAs performance

Britney Spears appreciates Sabrina Carpenter paying homage to her at the MTV VMAs, but she doesn’t “understand” the entire performance – find out more below.

• READ MORE: Why is Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ taking over Spotify algorithms?

On Wednesday night (September 11), Sabrina Carpenter performed at the VMAs, playing a medley of ‘Please Please Please’, ‘Taste’ and ‘Espresso’. At one point during her performance, she kissed an alien before segueing into ‘Espresso’ from a portion of her recent single ‘Taste’. Carpenter also paid homage to Britney Spears by playing a snippet of audio from the latter’s Mars-set video for ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’.

Following the performance, Spears took to her Instagram Story to talk about the performance. Spears noted that she didn’t watch the event live, but instead had seen a few videos on YouTube.

“Did you guys watch the VMAs? I didn’t watch the VMAs, but I did see stuff on my phone from YouTube of Sabrina Carpenter,” Spears said to start off her video – which has since expired from Instagram but was recorded and shared on X/Twitter.

She continued: “Why is she kissing an alien on stage? I adore her. I love her to death. I didn’t understand that part. Why didn’t she kiss a girl? Like, that was weird.”

Spears went on to add: “But I also thought that the whole thing was kind of weird altogether, but after watching that, I took a really long bath. And I actually colour. I’m into colouring right now. I like to colour and I like to trace the pictures and then go back over it… this Sabrina girl, she said my name on the red carpet and I thought that was kinda cool, because I forget I’m famous sometimes because I’m a mom, I’m kind of old, blah blah blah. But I thought it was kind of cool, this Sabrina girl, Carpenter. She said something, I was like ‘Thanks, that’s cool!’ She made me cool.”

‘Please Please Please’, ‘Taste’ and ‘Espresso’ all appear on Carpenter’s sixth studio album ‘Short n’ Sweet’, which was released last month.

In a four-star review of the record, NME wrote: “[…] It feels like the 25-year-old singer is at something of a turning point. Keep Carpenter’s musical calling cards, justify the hype, and she’ll soon be levelling up to major festival headliner – and this record largely gets the job done.”

Carpenter is due to embark on a UK and European headline tour next year, with the trek including two nights at The O2 in London. Find any remaining tickets here.

As for Spears, the veteran singer confirmed earlier this month that she’s in the process of developing a film with Wicked director Jon M Chu, but that it won’t be an adaptation of her memoir like fans were speculating. Instead, the film will be some sort of “fictional musical”. The ‘Baby One More Time’ did not share more about the film’s plot, but teased that she will be playing “an extremely intelligent character”.