On March 17, 2023, Sabrina Carpenter released her song “Feather” as a bonus track on her Emails I Can’t Send album. Seven months later, on October 31, 2023, Carpenter released the music video for the song.
As a fan favorite from the album and one of Carpenter’s most listened-to songs, the “Feather” music video—directed by Mia Barnes—saw immense, immediate success. Within the first 24 hours of the music video’s release, it had over one million streams. By day two it had almost 2.5 million streams and had become the cause of a major scandal.
Being released on Halloween, the video is appropriately bloody for the holiday; it has multiple scenes depicting the brutal deaths of various men who are either cat-calling her, mansplaining, or taking pictures up her skirt.
After two days of the music video being available for streaming, a Catholic bishop took issue with the fact that Carpenter had filmed certain parts of the video both in and outside of a church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
According to the Catholic News Agency, the production company behind the video had not followed the correct policy and protocol put in place to approve what can and can’t be filmed in the church. Part of this process production teams must go through when attempting to film the church’s property is a full review of the scenes and script.
The Catholic News Agency claimed that Carpenter’s production team did not go through the full process, leaving the church with no knowledge of what content the video would contain, and how the church would be included on it.
Although the video included multiple other locations such as a boxing gym and the streets of NYC, it was the church that caused the most scandal. Quickly after the video had gained an audience, the Diocese of Brooklyn released a statement via the Catholic News Agency that condemned the “appalling” nature of the music video and announced the removal of Rev. Monsignor Jamie J. Gigantiello.
According to some sources, the priest had, in fact, given Carpenter and her team permission to film at the location. The diocese released a statement announcing that it was the priest who had not completed the full review of scenes and script for the music video, and he was stripped of his duties as a priest for permitting the filming of the video to commence.
On November 25, 2023, a Mass of Reparation was held at the church and attended by approximately 50 people. The goal of the Mass was to “restore the sanctity” and reverse the harm that filming Carpenter’s video had caused.
It wasn’t until almost a month after the initial scandal had begun that Carpenter released her first official statement about the topic. When asked about the religious controversy while speaking to a Variety interviewer, Carpenter simply said, “We got approval in advance, and Jesus was a Carpenter.”
While being both immensely successful and popular, Carpenter’s music video for her hit song “Feather” certainly did one thing no other music video has done this year; it managed to get a Catholic priest stripped of his administrative duties.
