Britney Spears Says Sabrina Carpenter 'Made Me Cool' After VMAs Performance

It looks like pop star Britney Spears is a big fan of Sabrina Carpenter!

The "Espresso" singer performed at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards on September 11, where she appeared to honor the Princess of Pop with a nod to her trip to Mars in the iconic "Oops!... I Did It Again" music video.

Sabrina Carpenter was just one of the many performances at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, but she made it memorable due to a make-out session with an alien that occurred in between her medley of hits, which included "Please Please Please," "Espresso," and "Taste."

The spoken interlude from the "Oops!... I Did It Again" music video could be heard in the background as well. Although Britney Spears did not attend the event, she did take to Instagram the following day in order to share her thoughts on the tribute.

On September 12, the "Toxic" singer took to Instagram to confess that she did not actually watch the Video Music Awards live. She did, however, watch Carpenter's performance on YouTube the following day. Although she was honored by the tribute, she didn't seem to understand why the singer was kissing an alien instead of a girl.

“Why is she kissing an alien onstage? I adore her. I love her to death. I didn’t understand that part. Why didn’t she kiss a girl?” Spears asked, possibly referring to her infamous 2003 smooch with Madonna.

Spears went on to call the kiss "weird" before noting, “But I also thought that the whole thing was kind of weird altogether.”

It seems like the "Crossroads" is actually a big fan of Sabrina Carpenter and appreciated what she had to say about her on the red carpet. “This Sabrina girl, she said my name on the red carpet, and I thought that was kind of cool because I forget I’m famous sometimes,” Spears recalled before listing a few reasons why.

“Because I’m a mom, I’m kind of old, blah blah blah. But that was kind of cool…" she said. "She said something and I was like, ‘Thanks, that’s cool.’ She made me cool!"

Although she did not replicate a girl-on-girl kiss, Carpenter, who took home a win for Song of the Year, paid tribute to Madonna at the VMAs, wearing the same white dress that Madonna wore to the Oscars in 1991.

There were many different tributes to Britney Spears that appeared throughout the night. Halsey, who just announced her engagement on Instagram earlier today, revealed that her all-time favorite Video Music Awards moment was the kiss that was shared between Britney Spears and Madonna. Singer Tate McRae also wore a lacy black dress that appeared to be recreated from the pop star's red carpet look at the 2001 VMAs.

One of the biggest tributes of the night, however, actually came from Megan Thee Stallion, who recreated the Princess of Pop's "I'm A Slave 4 U" costume from the 2001 VMAs, complete with a giant python.

“Stop the music, stop the music!” Megan said as the snake slithered around her. “I’m just playin’! Come get this snake! I don’t know this snake, this snake don’t know me. Oh my God. I tried to hold it down for Britney.”

In her 2023 memoir "The Woman In Me," Britney Spears opened up on the viral moment that is still being talked about over two decades later.

In her memoir, Spears wrote, “The plan was for me to sing ‘I’m a Slave 4 U,’ and we decided I would use a snake as a prop. It’s become an iconic moment in VMA history, but it was even more terrifying than it appeared.”

“All I knew was to look down because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me,” she added.

"In my head I was saying, Just perform, just use your legs and perform. But what nobody knows is that as I was singing, the snake brought its head right around to my face, right up to me, and started hissing,” she wrote. “I was thinking, Are you f---ing serious right now? The f---ing god--- snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now. Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God."