This June, Sabrina Carpenter followed a familiar path for modern pop stars by landing on the cover of Rolling Stone. The image was deliberately striking: Carpenter appeared almost unclothed, framed by long, flowing hair, glowing under warm light in a photograph captured by acclaimed photographer David LaChapelle. The visual immediately placed her within a long tradition of pop iconography that blends sexuality, vulnerability, and spectacle.

At 26, Carpenter is well aware of pop history. She likely knows LaChapelle’s most famous Rolling Stone cover by heart—the 1999 image of a teenage Britney Spears reclining on pink satin sheets, wearing a black push-up bra and clutching a purple Teletubby. That cover ignited intense debate about youth, sexuality, and exploitation in pop culture. Carpenter, however, did not witness that controversy firsthand. The issue was released just weeks before she was born.

Carpenter belongs to a new category of artist: the post-post-Britney pop star. These performers cite Spears, now in her mid-40s, as a foundational influence despite having no living memory of her ascent. In 2025, a new wave of these artists—Carpenter, TikTok-born singer Tate McRae, and dancer-turned-pop experimenter Addison Rae—signaled a quiet but meaningful generational handoff in mainstream pop.

Millennial superstars like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga continue to dominate the industry, pushing back against the long-standing notion that women in pop have an expiration date. Yet alongside them, Gen Z artists are steadily establishing their own foothold. One fact sets them apart in a way that may unsettle older listeners: none of them were alive when “… Baby One More Time” first topped the charts.

Despite their distinct musical styles, these young performers share key formative experiences. They grew up fully immersed in the internet, at a time when social media was unavoidable rather than optional. As a result, their childhood selves remain permanently documented online. Early videos of Carpenter displaying sharp comedic instincts as a child performer, or clips of a teenage McRae tentatively sharing original songs on YouTube, still circulate freely. These artifacts exist alongside polished, adult images of the same women, creating a strange and sometimes uncomfortable digital continuity.

Living with these visible pasts has shaped how post-post-Britney pop stars approach fame and sexuality. They understand the scrutiny that comes with growing up in public, especially as young women. They are expected to project empowerment while simultaneously navigating a culture that continues to objectify female bodies. Unlike earlier generations, however, they recognize that the moral panic surrounding their evolution says more about the audience than about them. As Carpenter put it in a recent interview, she should not be blamed for maturing simply because she started working as a child.

Carpenter’s career mirrors Spears’s in notable ways. Like Spears, who joined The Mickey Mouse Club at 11, Carpenter found early fame as a preteen, landing a role on Disney Channel’s Girl Meets World in 2014. This parallel did not go unnoticed. At this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, when Carpenter performed her provocative disco-inspired track Tears, she appeared to reference Spears directly. The performance concluded with Carpenter dancing in the rain in a jewel-covered bra, a moment fans quickly linked to Spears’s iconic 2001 Dream Within a Dream Tour.

Throughout 2025, Spears’s presence lingered over pop culture like a benevolent, glittering shadow. Rumors of a forthcoming biopic only intensified discussions about her legacy. This reverence marks a notable shift. For years, Spears’s name was often invoked dismissively, used to suggest that young female pop stars were manufactured products or cautionary examples of fame gone wrong. Today’s Gen Z artists, however, view her differently. Lacking memories of the most invasive chapters of her public life, they embrace Spears as a pioneer and an aesthetic blueprint.

No one channels that influence more directly than Addison Rae. Born the same year as Oops! … I Did It Again, Rae shares more than just musical inspiration with Spears. Both are blonde performers from Louisiana who began as dancers before transitioning into pop stardom. Rae has spoken openly about how Spears’s journey shaped her ambitions, describing it as proof that someone from a small town could completely transform her life.

Even before fully committing to music, Rae carefully cultivated a visual and symbolic connection to Spears. She was photographed in Beverly Hills reading Spears’s memoir, The Woman in Me, and has worn clothing that openly challenges narratives framing Spears as a manufactured product. These gestures signaled admiration not only for Spears’s sound, but for her story.

When Rae released her debut album Addison in June, Spears’s influence became unmistakable. The record blends digital experimentation with breathy vocals, echoing the electro-pop textures of Spears’s Blackout era while recalling the sultry minimalism of her early-2000s hits. One of Rae’s singles even includes playful visual nods to Spears’s past work, reinforcing the lineage. Rae herself has cited I’m a Slave 4 U as a defining reference, calling Spears’s snake-draped VMA performance one of the greatest of all time.

That same sonic DNA can be heard in Tate McRae’s recent work. McRae, born the year Spears released Toxic, infuses her music with similar slinking rhythms and whispered sensuality, particularly on tracks like Sports Car from her third album. A former contestant on So You Think You Can Dance as a child, McRae spent years hovering just below mainstream success. Her early work positioned her as a moody, introspective pop singer, but it was only later that she fully embraced movement as a central part of her identity.

McRae has described a turning point when she decided to claim her role as a dancing pop star. Her breakout hit Greedy, paired with kinetic choreography and confident live performances, earned her frequent comparisons to Spears—comparisons she has described as both flattering and intimidating. In Sports Car, McRae even dances with a silver chair nearly identical to the one Spears used in the video for Stronger. By leaning into this lineage, McRae paradoxically found a clearer sense of self.

Yet this wave of homage draws from an idealized version of Spears, one frozen at the height of her creative power. The reality of Spears’s present life complicates the nostalgia. In recent years, she has shared cryptic messages on social media, temporarily deactivated her Instagram account, and remained largely absent from the music industry. Although she was freed from a conservatorship in 2021, she has openly described lasting trauma and expressed doubt that she will ever perform again.

This raises an uneasy question. If younger artists are eager to emulate Spears, have the lessons of her struggles already faded? Perhaps not. It is equally plausible that these performers have learned something essential from her experience: that public outrage over female pop stars’ sexuality often reflects societal discomfort rather than genuine concern.

While Carpenter, Rae, and McRae did not experience Spears’s earliest controversies, they did grow up during a broader cultural reckoning. In recent years, there has been renewed scrutiny of how harshly Spears and other young women in early-2000s pop culture were treated. The success of Spears’s memoir played a significant role in that reassessment, and Rae’s public engagement with the book suggests a deeper interest in Spears’s narrative, not just her image.

All three artists assert strong control over their own identities and reject criticism that places blame on women rather than on the systems that commodify them. McRae articulates this frustration in Purple Lace Bra, a song that confronts the reality of only being heard when sexualized. Carpenter has made similar arguments, pushing back against claims that her work is defined solely by sex, pointing out that such themes resonate because audiences reward them.

The post-post-Britney pop star does not claim innocence. Instead, she reflects the culture back at itself, unapologetically. If she is provocative, she suggests, it is because the audience is complicit too.