Sabrina Carpenter Channels Marilyn Monroe for 2024 VMAs Medley of ‘Please Please Please,’ ‘Taste’ & ‘Espresso’

Sabrina Carpenter was a glittering star at the 2024 MTV VMAs on Wednesday (Sept. 11) as she celebrated her first No. 1 album with a performance introduced by one of the award show’s OGs.

“I won my Moonman award in 1984 at the first-ever VMAs,” said “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” singer Cyndi Lauper as she introduced Carpenter, whose Short n’ Sweet album topped the Billboard 200 album chart dated Sept. 17.

Seated on a gigantic diamond on a trapeze high above the stage as silver confetti rained all around her, Carpenter — who was nominated for seven VMAs this year — crooned her Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 smash “Please Please Please,” and, as Lauper predicted, the very vocal audience enthusiastically shouted at the song’s NSFW refrain while Carpenter descended to the stage. She landed on a foreign planet as an astronaut and blue-skinned alien did a slinky dance all around her to the strains of Carpenter’s latest hit, “Taste.”

The song with sapphic overtones was accented by a censor-nightmare dance sequence in which the alien briefly threw a leg up on the kneeling space ranger’s shoulder as he, well, had a taste, with their bump-and-grind threatening to distract from the singer’s vocals. That is, until she yanked the astronaut to the side and laid a big kiss on the female alien’s lips.

Ripping off the high collar on her silver-studded bodysuit, Carpenter strutted down the catwalk as she glided into her No. 3 Hot 100 summer smash “Espresso.” All around her, the space filled up with more than two dozen helmeted rocketeers busting out interstellar choreography beneath neon signs bearing the song’s title and space-themed images on the stage, whose main feature was an enormous Moon Person reaching out into the arena.

The routine ended with Carpenter lying back into the dogpile of space-helmeted men while giving off serious Marilyn Monroe Gentlemen Prefer Blondes vibes.