Here’s something that doesn’t make any sense.

In February 2025, Sabrina Carpenter sat in the crowd at the Grammy Awards, up for Best New Artist. The crowd cheered. The cameras pointed right at her. Social media went wild. Millions of people who had spent the last year singing “Please Please Please” and “Espresso” in their cars felt like they had just found their new favorite singer.

Except Sabrina Carpenter wasn’t new. Not even close.

At the time of that Grammy nomination, Sabrina Carpenter had been in the music business for over ten years. She had put out six albums. She had been working since she was fourteen years old. She had toured, recorded, done interviews, been on TV, and released music nonstop since 2014.

And yet, for most of those ten-plus years, almost no one outside of her core Disney fans knew who she was.

Then almost overnight, she became one of the biggest pop stars in the world.

The internet had a theory. People called her an “industry plant” — a fake star being pushed by a hidden music company. Her sudden rise did look odd. How does someone work for ten years while being mostly unknown, and then in just a year and a half become someone you hear everywhere?

But the industry plant theory has it completely backwards.

The real story isn’t that the music business made Sabrina Carpenter. The real story is that the business — specifically one record label — had been holding her back for years. And the minute she left it, she became unstoppable.

That label is Hollywood Records. Disney’s label.

And what happened to Sabrina Carpenter isn’t just a one-time thing. It’s a pattern — a long, clear, and very sad pattern — of one of the most powerful entertainment companies in the world taking amazing young singers, signing them to unfair deals, taking away their choices, making them work way too hard, and then either dropping them when they’re no longer useful, or watching them become massive stars the minute they walk out the door.

This is the story of Disney’s record label.

And it is not a fairy tale.

 

“This is my debut album mostly on vinyl. Very rare, isn’t it?”

“Very. I don’t even have it. That’s how rare it is.”

“Only two hundred made. Given to record execs.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie.”

“Given to you?”

“No. Or maybe at the time, but I don’t know. I moved a couple times in the middle.”

“Oh, you might have had it.”

“Two hundred made. Damn. Or left.”

A pause.

“They really didn’t give a about me.”

 

To understand how Hollywood Records became what it is, you have to know about Disney’s complicated history with music.

Music has been the biggest strength of Disney’s entire business from the very beginning. In 1928, when Steamboat Willie came out and showed the world Mickey Mouse, what made it so special wasn’t just the cartoon. It was the sound matching the picture. Mickey whistling, the music moving perfectly with the action on screen. Audiences had never seen anything like it.

Music wasn’t just for show at Disney. It was Disney.

By the golden age — Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi — music wasn’t just part of the movies. It was the heart of the story. “When You Wish Upon a Star.” “Heigh-Ho.” “Baby Mine.” These weren’t just catchy tunes. They were massive classics still loved today, sometimes even more than the movies they came from.

Here is where the first huge, costly mistake happened.

In the early days, Disney was often short on cash. Walt was brilliant but always out of money, constantly doing whatever it took to keep the studio open. And so, in a choice that would cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few decades, Disney kept selling off the rights to own its own music.

The rights to Snow White. Pinocchio. Fantasia.

Songs that would become some of the most famous and most played pieces of music in history. And Disney didn’t own them. They needed the money. They made the deal. And they spent decades watching other people collect the profits.

By the time the company’s leaders fully realized how much they had given away, it was too late for those classic songs.

But they weren’t going to make the same mistake again.

Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, Disney built its own music infrastructure. Disneyland Records was created to put out music tied to the theme parks and TV shows. Wonderland Music handled songwriting. Buena Vista Records handled some movie soundtracks.

The company was learning, slowly and clumsily, how to be a music business. But these were small labels, selling soundtracks and kids’ albums to Disney fans. Nobody was walking into a record store in 1975 and looking at the Disneyland Records section next to Led Zeppelin.

Then came The Little Mermaid in 1989. Beauty and the Beast in 1991. Aladdin in 1992.

And in 1994 came the ultimate game-changer: The Lion King.

The comeback was real, and it was huge. The Lion King soundtrack — featuring songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, with background music by Hans Zimmer — sold over fifteen million copies worldwide. It won two Oscars. It became one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time.

Disney was making an enormous amount of money through music. And they knew it.

 

1989 wasn’t just the year The Little Mermaid came out. It was also the year Disney started Hollywood Records.

This was their big chance. This wasn’t a label for kids’ music or theme park songs. Hollywood Records was Disney’s attempt at making normal, everyday popular music — rock, pop, whatever was selling. They wanted to be in that business.

The timing seemed perfect. Disney was on a winning streak. They had money and a name that everyone in the world knew.

What could go wrong?

Almost everything.

Hollywood Records in the early 1990s was, to put it nicely, a total mess. The label had money. It had Disney’s support. What it didn’t have was any real understanding of how the music business actually worked, or any clear idea of what kind of artists they wanted to sign.

So they made mistake after mistake.

Let’s start with the missed opportunities, because they’re almost painful to read about.

In the early 1990s, Hollywood Records had a chance to sign Nirvana. Yes, Nirvana — the band that was about to explode out of Seattle and completely change popular music. They said no.

They had a chance to sign the Smashing Pumpkins, another band that would go on to sell tens of millions of albums and become one of the biggest acts of the decade. They said no to them, too.

But maybe the biggest missed opportunity — the one that shows exactly how Disney operated — was their near-deal with Dr. Dre.

After his first group broke up, Dr. Dre was one of the biggest names in music. There were serious talks about him possibly joining Hollywood Records. This wasn’t just a rumor; it got far enough along that it became a very real possibility.

Then Disney’s executives shut it down.

The reason, according to reports from that time, was mostly about image. Dr. Dre’s music was too edgy, too provocative, too far outside the Disney comfort zone. So instead of signing Dr. Dre, Disney let him walk.

He went on to release The Chronic in 1992 — one of the most important hip-hop albums ever made. He essentially invented a new style of music, launched the career of Snoop Dogg, eventually built his own massive record label, and later another label that would sign Eminem and 50 Cent.

The cultural and monetary value of what Disney walked away from is impossible to measure.

But here’s the hinge: saying no to Dr. Dre wasn’t just about him. It was a preview of how Hollywood Records would make decisions for the next thirty years — not based on talent, not based on artistic potential, but based on whether the artist fit the Disney mold, whether they were easy to control, whether they were safe.

And meanwhile, the label was losing an enormous amount of money. By 1997, Hollywood Records had reportedly lost around $150 million.

For reference, that’s Disney’s money. The company that made The Lion King and The Little Mermaid watched hundreds of millions just disappear.

 

It got worse.

In the mid-1990s, the label was hit with a major workplace scandal. Mark Hudson, a top music producer who had worked with major artists including Ringo Starr and Aerosmith, was accused by multiple women of highly inappropriate behavior and crossing serious boundaries at work.

The claims were very serious. The behavior described was harmful and went on for a long time.

And the label’s first reaction, according to reports from the time? They tried to downplay the situation and keep it out of the public eye. Their first thought wasn’t to protect the people who had been mistreated. It was to protect the brand. To keep it quiet. To make sure the company still looked good.

This pattern — image over doing the right thing, brand over people — would define Hollywood Records for decades to come.

The one bright spot during this bleak period: Disney had a TV show called The Mickey Mouse Club. And on that show in the early 1990s were three kids who would go on to become some of the biggest pop stars in the world.

Britney Spears. Justin Timberlake. Christina Aguilera.

All three were right there, working for Disney, singing and dancing every week on a Disney TV show.

And Disney let all three of them go.

The Mickey Mouse Club ended in 1994. Instead of seeing the incredible musical talent right in front of them and signing these kids to record deals, Disney just moved on. Britney went to Jive Records and became the best-selling teenage artist in history. Justin went to RCA with NSYNC and then had one of the biggest solo careers of the 2000s. Christina went to RCA and won four Grammy awards on her very first album.

All that future success. All those massive hit records. Disney had first pick of all of it. They couldn’t see what they had, and they let it walk right out the door.

Losing Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera hurt. Even for a huge company like Disney, watching three of your former child stars become the biggest pop stars on Earth and not making a penny from it is a tough lesson.

So Disney made a decision that would shape the next twenty years of Hollywood Records.

If they couldn’t find stars and sign them, they would make the stars themselves.

 

The plan was smart in a cold, business-focused way.

Disney already had a steady pipeline of young talent. These were kids who auditioned, got roles on Disney Channel shows, and quickly gained millions of loyal fans who watched them every week. These kids were already trained actors and singers. People already knew who they were. They already had built-in audiences.

Why go out and find the next Britney Spears when you could just manufacture one?

The first real test of this plan was Hilary Duff.

Duff was cast as Lizzie McGuire in 2001, and the show quickly became one of Disney Channel’s biggest hits. She was relatable, down-to-earth, and had a huge, devoted fanbase of young girls who felt like she was their friend. And she could sing.

So Disney activated their plan. Hilary Duff got a record deal with Hollywood Records. Her first album, Metamorphosis, came out in 2003 and sold over four million copies in the United States alone. It debuted at number one on the charts.

No matter how you looked at it, it was a massive win. The first try worked perfectly.

But even with this early success, problems were already starting to show.

Even though she sold millions of records and made a lot of money for Hollywood Records, Duff’s compensation was structured so she kept only a tiny fraction of what another artist with the same success would have earned. The label controlled all of her decisions — what songs she sang, what her music sounded like, how she presented herself to the world.

Duff was treated like a product. And products don’t get to make choices for themselves.

Then there were the greatest hits albums.

Hilary Duff was a teenager. She had only been making music for a few years. Yet Hollywood Records pushed her to release a greatest hits album while she was still a teenager, still making new music, right in the middle of her career.

Greatest hits albums are usually a retrospective of a long career — the kind of thing you release after singing for twenty years to give fans your best songs in one place. For a teenage artist, they serve a completely different purpose.

They’re just a way to check a box on a contract.

If your record deal requires you to deliver a certain number of albums and you want to leave, putting out a greatest hits collection can count toward that number. It’s a way to fulfill your obligation without having to keep giving the label new original songs.

Hilary Duff released a greatest hits album at seventeen years old.

That tells you everything you need to know about how Hollywood Records viewed their artists. They didn’t see them as people to nurture over long careers. They saw them as cash cows to milk quickly before they aged out of relevance.

The star-making machine was built. And it was just getting started.

 

By the mid-2000s, Disney went all-in on their plan. The Disney Channel was producing hit after hit, and Hollywood Records was ready to cash in on every single one.

The roster they assembled over the next few years was arguably the greatest concentration of musical talent in kids’ TV history.

Miley Cyrus. The Jonas Brothers. Demi Lovato. Selena Gomez.

Every one of them had genuine talent. Every one of them had a huge future ahead of them. And every single one of them would eventually leave Disney — some having a much harder time than others, with stories that reveal exactly what was happening behind closed doors at the record label.

Let’s start with the biggest one.

Miley Cyrus wasn’t just a Disney star. She was the Disney star.

Hannah Montana premiered in 2006 and became a phenomenon. The show, the music, the merchandise — it was a massive enterprise worth billions of dollars, all carried by a twelve-year-old girl from Tennessee.

And that twelve-year-old girl was working twelve-hour days.

When Hannah Montana was at its peak, Miley was filming a TV show, recording music, rehearsing for concerts, appearing at events, giving interviews, and maintaining the nonstop schedule that Disney demanded. She was a child, and the hours she was working would have been brutal for a grown adult with decades of experience.

She didn’t get to choose what her music sounded like. The Hannah Montana character wasn’t Miley’s idea — Disney owned it. The music was carefully manufactured to appeal to young fans and keep the Disney brand squeaky clean. The songs were about crushes, friendship, and being yourself — safe, family-friendly, thoroughly unobjectionable.

It was fine for what it was. But it wasn’t what Miley actually wanted to make.

So the moment her contract ended — the second she was finally free — Miley Cyrus did something that shocked the world.

The 2013 Bangerz era. “Wrecking Ball.” The VMA performance.

It was a bold, calculated break from the sanitized image Disney had constructed for her. People thought she was just acting out. She wasn’t. It was a statement — the sound of someone who had been told for years exactly who she was and what she could and couldn’t do finally getting to choose for herself.

She didn’t just change a little. She went all the way, because she had been held back for far too long.

The music she made after leaving Disney’s control — Bangerz and later the critically acclaimed Plastic Hearts — revealed her true talent. It showed what she could really do when she was allowed to be an artist instead of a brand.

 

The Jonas Brothers’ story shows just how much control Disney really had, because it went far beyond the music.

Nick, Joe, and Kevin Jonas signed with Hollywood Records and became huge stars through the Disney Channel. They had real musical ability — they wrote songs, played instruments, and genuinely loved rock music, which occasionally surfaced in their work when they were allowed to be themselves.

But Disney didn’t care about who the Jonas Brothers actually were. They only cared about what the band could be sold as.

So a carefully manufactured image was constructed and enforced through strict rules. The brothers wore purity rings to signal they were “good boys.” This fit perfectly with Disney’s family-friendly brand and the values of the traditional families who made up a large portion of their audience.

The control went even deeper. The brothers were in their late teens and early twenties when they were most famous on Disney. But their brand demanded that they appear and act much younger.

Based on accounts that have emerged over the years, the brothers were pressured to always look young, always act perfect, always play it safe. Some of these rules now seem absurd in retrospect. They were reportedly told to shave constantly — to maintain a smooth, youthful, bare-faced look even as they were growing into men.

When you’re twenty years old but your bosses insist you look sixteen, you start to understand how the Disney machine viewed these artists. They weren’t treated as normal people going through natural growth. They were treated as products whose sole purpose was to protect and promote a brand.

When the Jonas Brothers finally returned as adults making music on their own terms, you could feel the relief in their songs. They were finally allowed to grow up.

 

If Miley Cyrus shows what happens when an artist’s creativity is suppressed, and the Jonas Brothers show what happens when a star’s image is rigidly controlled, then Demi Lovato shows something much sadder.

Her story reveals what happens when the system doesn’t just hold an artist back — when it actively breaks them down.

Demi Lovato came to Disney with extraordinary natural talent. She had a voice that, even as a young teenager, was genuinely powerful and technically accomplished. She was cast in Camp Rock alongside the Jonas Brothers, got her own TV show (Sonny with a Chance), and was quickly absorbed into the Hollywood Records system.

The schedule was relentless. The pressure was immense. And Demi — who was already grappling with significant personal struggles — found herself in an environment that offered no support and placed an enormous burden on her mental health.

What has emerged over years of interviews, her documentary, and her own words paints a devastating picture.

She faced serious mental health challenges. She turned to dangerous coping mechanisms. The warning signs were there for anyone paying attention to see.

But according to Demi, the company didn’t offer compassion or assistance. Instead, they reminded her that she was merely a revenue stream and made her feel like they could easily replace her with someone else.

Replaceable.

That word — or words like it — appears in accounts from numerous Disney stars. It’s how the label and the TV side spoke to them when they pushed back, voiced concerns, or showed signs of struggling.

You are not a person to us. You are a product. And products can be replaced.

Demi’s personal battles followed her for years after her Disney days. They culminated in a highly publicized and frightening medical emergency in 2018 that made headlines around the world. She has spoken extensively about where these struggles began, and they trace back at least in part to the pressure cooker environment she was placed in as a teenager at Disney.

There’s no way to tell this story without confronting that truth directly.

 

Selena Gomez’s time with Disney follows a familiar arc.

Enormous talent. A business structured to exploit that talent. Restrictive contracts that kept her trapped longer than she wanted to stay.

Like Hilary Duff before her, Selena Gomez released a greatest hits album while still very young — barely into her twenties. The album wasn’t a celebration of a long career. It was a contractual obligation. A way to check a box and get closer to leaving.

Gomez has shared in interviews how all-consuming her Disney years were, how she lacked creative autonomy, and how the business treated her more like a commodity than a person.

Like the other stars of her generation, she found that her best, most authentic art — the music that actually sounded like her — came after she left Hollywood Records behind.

This repeating cycle isn’t an accident. It’s not just isolated bad moments. It’s how the system is designed to work.

 

Here’s where it gets interesting.

By the late 2000s and early 2010s, everyone already knew the stories. Miley, Demi, Selena, the Jonas Brothers — the patterns were clear. It wasn’t hard to see what was happening.

And yet, Hollywood Records kept doing things exactly the same way.

Except some of the newer stars had been paying attention. And they made different choices.

Sabrina Carpenter: The Long Trap

Sabrina Carpenter was discovered at fourteen and signed to Hollywood Records. She was young, talented, with a voice that was distinctly her own even then. She signed a five-album deal.

Think about what that means for a fourteen-year-old.

If she released one album every two years — a normal pace — that’s a ten-year commitment. She signed that contract before she was old enough to drive a car. She didn’t really understand what she was agreeing to. She had no leverage to negotiate a better deal.

She had talent. Disney had a contract. That was it.

She released four albums with Hollywood Records. Four albums. And while they had good moments and she had fans who genuinely loved her work, none of those albums broke through to the general public.

Why not? Because she didn’t have control over her own music.

Hollywood Records put her through rapid-fire songwriting sessions — moving her from room to room with different collaborators, manufacturing songs like a factory assembly line instead of letting her write naturally from genuine emotion. The music they produced was fine. Clean. Professionally crafted. But it wasn’t her.

Those writing sessions weren’t designed to help Sabrina discover her artistic voice. They were designed to churn out product as efficiently as possible. There’s a difference, and you can hear that difference in the music.

She spent years in this system. She worked hard, released albums, toured, did everything the label asked. But she wasn’t becoming a star.

Then she left Hollywood Records.

She signed with Island Records. She released Emails I Can’t Send — an album that was more personal, more clever, more honest. Then she released Short n’ Sweet. And “Espresso” became one of the biggest songs of 2024.

Suddenly, Sabrina Carpenter was everywhere.

She didn’t change. Her talent didn’t change. What changed was that she finally had the freedom to be herself — and the world loved it immediately.

The people calling her an “industry plant” had it completely backwards. The plant was what her old label was trying to cultivate — a safe, controlled, generic pop star. The real Sabrina Carpenter only emerged once she broke free from all of that.

 

Olivia Rodrigo: The Smart Play

Not everyone got trapped in the cycle.

Olivia Rodrigo was definitely a Disney star. She appeared in Bizaardvark and then became the lead of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. She had the fame, the fans, and the obvious path that Hollywood Records had used for years.

But she watched what happened to Miley, Demi, Selena, and Sabrina. And she said, “No thank you.”

Even though people expected her to follow the same trajectory, Olivia Rodrigo did not sign with Hollywood Records. Instead, she chose Interscope Records for her music career.

Her success was immediate and massive. Sour came out in 2021. “Drivers License” broke streaming records around the world. The album debuted at number one in multiple countries. She won three Grammy awards for her debut album alone.

Guts came out in 2023 and was just as beloved.

By the time she reached the age when many Disney stars were still trying to escape their old contracts, Olivia had already become one of the biggest and most acclaimed artists in the world.

She didn’t achieve this simply because she’s more talented than everyone who came before her — though she is extraordinarily talented. She achieved it because she was in control of her own music from the very beginning. She was allowed to write about her real feelings. She was allowed to make the kind of music she genuinely wanted to make. She was allowed to be herself.

When you compare her trajectory to the Hollywood Records artists, the difference is stark. It’s the clearest possible evidence.

 

Zendaya: The One Who Walked Away

And then there’s Zendaya.

She may be the best example of someone saying no to the Disney music machine. Zendaya spent years on Shake It Up and K.C. Undercover. By the mid-2010s, she was one of Disney’s biggest stars. She had genuine musical talent.

Hollywood Records put her through their system. She released her first album in 2013.

And then she stopped.

Not because she failed. Not because the label dropped her. But because she looked at what the music business — especially the Hollywood Records version of it — demanded of her and decided it simply wasn’t worth it.

She has said in interviews that dealing with the label’s rules and the industry’s intense pressures drained all the joy and passion she had for music. The entire system took the love right out of her.

She watched what was happening to the other young stars. She felt the weight of the machine. And she made a choice.

She walked away from music entirely and poured all that energy into her acting career. Euphoria. Dune. Challengers. She became one of the most acclaimed actors of her generation — a two-time Emmy winner, a massive movie star.

Would she have achieved all that if she had stayed in the music machine? Maybe. Probably. She’s brilliant at everything she does.

But the fact that one of the most talented people of her age looked at Hollywood Records and decided that quitting music completely was better than working with them says something devastating.

It’s something the label should probably feel bad about. But they almost certainly don’t.

 

By now, the pattern should be clear. But it’s worth taking a step back to articulate exactly what Hollywood Records has done and continues to do.

Step one: Timing. Hollywood Records signs singers when they are young — often fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old. This isn’t coincidence. Young singers have no experience in the music business. They don’t have lawyers who understand entertainment contracts. They have parents who are excited about their child’s big break but may not know how to advocate for fair terms.

A five-album contract sounds like a dream come true. When you’re fourteen and all you want is to sing, you don’t know that it means a decade of being locked into strict rules. You don’t know that the royalty structure is designed to funnel most of the money to the company. You don’t know what “creative control” means or why lacking it will make you feel trapped.

You’re fourteen. You sign.

Step two: Control. Once a singer is signed, the company controls both the business and the creative sides. Songwriting is structured for maximum speed. Singers aren’t given time or space to find their own sound organically. They’re placed into a machine engineered to produce catchy songs on a tight schedule.

This is why so many Hollywood Records artists sound generic during their Disney years and then sound completely different after they leave. It’s not just growing up. It’s freedom.

Step three: The replacement threat. The company’s most insidious tactic is the constant implication that anyone can be replaced. For singers who push back, who express unhappiness, who seem exhausted — the message is clear.

You’re replaceable. There are a hundred kids waiting for your spot.

This is devastating for young artists, especially those who have made their Disney career their entire identity. The fear of losing the one thing that makes you special is highly effective at keeping you compliant.

Step four: The exit trap. When a singer is finally ready to move on, the company has ways to keep them longer. Greatest hits albums are released to fulfill contractual obligations. Legal mechanisms are deployed to delay their departure. Getting out of a Hollywood Records deal is deliberately hard, expensive, and time-consuming.

 

The real cost of all this isn’t just financial. It’s the years of an artist’s prime creative development spent making music that isn’t truly theirs.

Sabrina Carpenter spent from age fourteen to her mid-twenties in this system. Demi Lovato spent years in it, and it took a devastating toll on her wellbeing. Miley Cyrus spent years carefully confined, then exploded out the other side.

The talent was always there. The music they made after leaving proved it. The system existed only to hold them back, control them, and extract profit for as long as possible.

Here’s what’s so remarkable about the Hollywood Records story.

None of this is a secret.

What happened to Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, the Jonas Brothers, and Selena Gomez has been public knowledge for years. Demi made a documentary about it. Miley has discussed it extensively in interviews. The Jonas Brothers talked about it in their own film.

The facts are out there.

And yet, Hollywood Records has kept doing things exactly the same way. They keep signing young artists to long contracts with minimal creative autonomy. They keep prioritizing corporate image over artist welfare. They keep running the system because the system generates enormous profits.

Even with all the talent it suppresses. Even with all the artists it burns out or drives away. The machine still produces massive amounts of money.

The Disney name remains extraordinarily powerful. There will always be new young singers. And as long as the label can keep signing the next wave of fourteen-year-olds before those kids have the experience or support to protect themselves — the system continues.

 

The Sabrina Carpenter story, the Olivia Rodrigo story, and the Zendaya story all point to something important.

They show us artists who either found a way to escape or who paid such close attention that they never joined in the first place. Sabrina spent years inside the system and finally left — and the world immediately embraced her true self. Olivia watched what happened to the older generation and chose a different path. Zendaya looked at what the system demanded and decided no music career at all was preferable to that version of one.

Three different responses to the same machine. All three are thriving today precisely because of the choices they made about that machine.

The artists who made it big were the ones who either left Hollywood Records or never signed with them at all.

That’s not an accident. That’s evidence.

 

Disney is one of the most beloved companies in history. The stories it tells, the characters it creates, the joy it brings — these have genuinely enriched billions of lives for nearly a century. That’s real. That matters.

But the Walt Disney Company is also a massive corporation. It has shareholders. It has revenue targets. It has an image that it will protect fiercely.

Hollywood Records is the part of the company that reveals what that protection actually costs.

It costs creative freedom. It costs years of artists’ lives spent making music that isn’t theirs. And sometimes — often — it costs far more. Their mental health. Their peace of mind. The simple, fundamental joy of loving what they do.

The uncomfortable truth about Hollywood Records is that its most famous artists — the ones who became the biggest stars, who made the deepest impact, whom the label would most like to claim credit for — succeeded despite the label, not because of it.

Miley Cyrus’s best albums came after Disney. Selena Gomez’s most personal music came after Disney. Demi Lovato’s most honest work came after Disney. Sabrina Carpenter became a global star after Disney.

The label didn’t build these careers. It held them back.

And the artists who saw the problem before they signed — Olivia Rodrigo, who went straight to another label, and Zendaya, who walked away from music entirely rather than submit — are doing just fine.

 

Sabrina Carpenter sat in the crowd at the Grammys, nominated for Best New Artist for her sixth album.

After ten years in the music business, she wasn’t new.

She was finally free.

And being free, it turns out, sounds a lot like the number one song in the country.