Songfacts®:

• "Can't Blame A Girl For Trying" was Sabrina Carpenter's first single, released when she was just 14. It's age appropriate, with Carpenter stressing out because she got a little too excited when talking to a boy she likes, and now she thinks she blew her chance. She's not going to let it get her down, though. Can't blame a girl for trying.
• Carpenter did a lot of her own songwriting starting with her 2016 album Evolution, but around this time her songs were written by others. "Can't Blame A Girl For Trying" was written by Meghan Trainor with two other songwriters - Al Anderson and Chris Gelbuda - and initially recorded by Trainor. She made a video for the song, which she posted on YouTube in 2012, but it didn't get much attention. Trainor's version was pulled and the song went to Carpenter, who version was released in March 2014. A few months later, Trainor released her debut single, "All About That Bass," which was the song of the summer and went to #1 in many countries.
• The lead instrument on this one is a ukulele, which keeps it lighthearted. Session man Jim McGorman played most of the instruments on the track.
• The Disney show Girl Meets World, starring Sabrina Carpenter as Maya Hart, went on the air a few months after this song was released. Carpenter, who was signed to Disney's Hollywood Records, sang the show's theme song, "Take On The World."
  
  Carpenter had made a few acting appearances leading up to it, with guest spots on Austin & Ally and The Goodwin Games. She was also the voice of Princess Vivian in the Disney animated series Sofia The First. Girl Meets World lasted three seasons; when it ended in 2017, Carpenter devoted more time to her music. She had modest hits with "Nonsense" and "Feather" in 2023, but landed on the Top Hits playlists in 2024 with "Espresso" from her sixth album, Short n' Sweet.
• Carpenter shows off her acting skills in the video, where she playfully larks about in various scenes and outfits.
• Carpenter became friends with the song's writer, Meghan Trainor, and has fond memories of it, even though she's a very different person now. "That song is so sweet," she told Wired in 2021. "Friends of mine love that song. They say, 'That song still bangs so hard!'"
• The song was included on Carpenter's 2014 EP, also called Can't Blame A Girl For Trying, and in 2015 was part of the tracklist for her debut album, Eyes Wide Open.
• When Eyes Wide Open came out in 2015, Sabrina Carpenter was still best known as a Disney Channel star from Girl Meets World. The album only reached #43 on the Billboard 200, and its rollout was even more limited than she realized. In a 2025 interview with music journalist Nardwuar, Carpenter was stunned to learn that Hollywood Records pressed just 200 vinyl copies of the album.
  
  Her unfiltered reaction summed up the experience: "They really didn't give a f--- about me." To make matters worse, most of those copies went straight to label executives instead of fans or even to Carpenter herself. When asked if she'd ever received one, she admitted she didn't think so, then softened the blow with a shrug: "Or maybe at the time, but I don't know. I moved a couple of times in the middle."
• When Meghan Trainor worked with Sabrina Carpenter on "Can't Blame A Girl For Trying" she remembered thinking Carpenter was the complete article. "I've never watched someone work so hard," she told Audacy. "She put in the work. She did everything that everyone tells us to do. And I just remember being like, 'How come it's not clicking for people? She's perfect. Like, what is going on?'"
  
  When "that one explosion song" finally broke Carpenter, Trainor felt vindicated because industry veterans once told her the same thing before "All About That Bass" took off.