Taylor Swift Reacts to Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ Cover: “She Nailed It”

Sabrina Carpenter recently released a couple of Spotify Singles, one of which was a stripped-down cover of “I Knew You Were Trouble” by friend and superstar Taylor Swift. Now, Swift has responded to the acoustic rendition of her upbeat pop hit, originally featured on the 2012 album Red.

“Well she nailed it,” Swift wrote succinctly on her Instagram stories, accompanied by a link to the song. Swift has been in support of Carpenter recently, bringing her on a few legs of The Eras Tour and even taking her along to Kansas City Chiefs games, which has been getting a ton of sports media coverage lately. This shoutout from Swift seems like a high honor, though, as it shows her respect for Carpenter as an artist.

Carpenter reimagined the hit song as a slower, darker version, almost stripping it down to its bones. The pared-down rendition fits Carpenter’s effortless vocals as she flits easily between lower and higher pitches throughout the song. It’s a masterclass in taking a relatively basic pop song and turning it into a melancholy lament for misguided love.

[RELATED: 5 Things To Know About Sabrina Carpenter]

In November, Swift will once again be taking Carpenter on the road, this time on the Latin American leg of The Eras Tour. She will also join her next February and March in Australia and Singapore, respectively. Carpenter made her Eras Tour debut in Mexico City, where she covered another megastar: the late Selena Quintanilla’s 1995 hit, “Dreaming of You.”

“[Taylor Swift] is one of my main inspirations ever since I was a little girl, and now to just be able to watch that show every night is going to be so special,” Carpenter told Billboard in August, as she was gearing up to go on tour with Swift. “I’ve been growing up with her advice in her songs because it’s very much a how-to book on how to survive as a young woman, which is really special. Watching her in and of itself is how you learn. I admire her work ethic and her talent and she’s just so amazing.

In her own sphere, Carpenter recently released a deluxe version of her 2022 album emails i can’t send, titled emails i can’t send fwd:, and her Spotify Singles session also included a rendition of her song “Feather” from the album.

Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images for MTV