The fact that Chappell Roan makes nothing but bops really saved her from more people pointing out that "Hit it like rom pom pa pom / get it hot like Papa John" is genuinely one of the stupidest lyrics ever recorded

SABRINA CARPENTER ESPRESSO (2024)

Ranting and Raving: "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter

Have you ever just been out in the world, minding your business, only to hear a song out in the wild for the first time and it just grabs you in a chokehold? For me, “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter is one of those songs. It’s one of those pop songs that just makes you turn your ear towards a speaker and ask, “Oh. What is this?” I heard it for the first time in a store (rhymes with Schmarget) and then proceeded to listen to it about eighty more times after that. A great pop song will make you do that and this one is one of the best of the year so far. I mean it.

I knew who Sabrina Carpenter was before this song (I mostly live under a rock, but I still be knowing things from time to time) but I’m obviously not her target demographic and nothing she had done before really gripped me the way this has. Everything about “Espresso” is perfect and I’m ready to do what this series does best: annoy you with many MANY words about a song I love. If you want a silly review of this song in a TL;DR single sentence, I would say, “I don’t drink coffee... but this song must be what having a caffeine addiction feels like!”

The first thing that truly gripped me about this song is just how FUN it is! There’s so much magic packed into three and a half minutes and it serves as a perfect reminder of why I love and enjoy pop music when it gets it as right as a Starbucks barista who has my usual order down to a science. It’s upbeat, it’s catchy as hell, the lyrics are fun to sing along to. What more do you need? This isn’t a song that re-invents the wheel and that’s because it knows it doesn’t have to. Like her reference to Nintendo in the chorus (“Switch it up like Nintendo”) the primary concern is about whether the song is fun to listen to and if it’s something you’ll want to hear again and again and not get bored of. In a way, this song is like the Super Mario World of pop music; a song that provides comfort and fun and it doesn’t require a lot of knowledge and skill in order to enjoy. Anybody can pick it up, start playing, and have a good time with it.

Which means a lot these days.

At the time of this writing, everybody and their favorite wine aunt is currently dissecting Taylor Swift’s newest album, The Tortured Poets Department, searching for hidden meanings and clues and signs about her relationships between her and Matty Healy from The 1975 or British actor Joe Alwyn (take your pick). I didn’t hate TTPD, but the album also didn’t do much for me because it’s so deep within the Taylor Discographic Universe (the TDU) that unless you have a decade of lore explained to you, those songs lose a lot of appeal and power. It’s like watching Avengers: Infinity War when all I’ve ever watched is Iron Man. Taylor isn’t the only one that’s been suffering from this. Ariana Grande’s newest album Eternal Sunshine comes with the baggage of that whole thing that happened between her and that dude who played Spongebob on Broadway or something. The most I’ve ever heard about “The Boy Is Mine” in terms of discourse are all the jokes and memes about how she’s singing about a guy who weirdly looks exactly like her brother and spent years being an adult man playing Spongebob on stage. Even Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers,” the biggest song of last year, loses some of its impact if you’re like me and couldn’t give a shit about Liam Hemsworth or the emotional roller coaster story of her relationship with him. 

Granted, you can still listen to all of these things with their real world inspirations and contexts removed and get just as much, if not more, out of that, but there’s just something really refreshing about being able to enjoy a song without needing an entire “____ iceberg explained” video in order to truly “get it.” I got “Espresso” immediately and the only real world context I can gather is that she probably wrote this song about one or many dudes that have been “down bad” for her. I shudder to think which niche micro-celebrities with the over-inflated attitude that comes with the phrase “I have a post that got over 10,000 notes on Tumblr” have said or done while attempting to shoot their poorly aimed shot with her.

That’s a good place to start talking about the lyrics to the song, which are all about her being playful with a guy and basking in how he is absolutely obsessed and crazy with her. More important than the words themselves is how Sabrina delivers them. There’s a really great balancing act where it’s just the right level of confidence and the belief that you’re hot shit, without going overboard into arrogance. She maintains a constant level of playfulness throughout the entire song and it’s great! It starts as soon as the second line of the chorus hits at the beginning of the song: “Is it that sweet? I guess so.” 

There’s also the line that begins the second verse: “I'm working late 'cause I'm a singer.” I absolutely adore the way she says that line. Every. Single. Time. Again, it’s just the right amount of playful and sarcastic. I can picture the conversation that line would be featured in if anybody she’s dated within the last three years has foolishly asked her if she’s busy tonight.

“Wyd tonight, babe? 😜” “I’m working late.” “What?? Why? 🥺” “...‘cause I’m a singer.”

That line reads like she’s had to answer that question one too many times to one too many idiots. Whether it’s studio time or live performance, singers be working at night. Duh. It’s such a fun line and it gets stuck in your head. You wait for it each time you listen and I can’t imagine the feeling of being in a whole stadium full of people all singing that line together. It’s such a delicate tightrope being walked so damn well, especially since it can go sour so fast if you perform it the wrong way. The following line, “Oh, he looks so cute wrapped around my finger” keeps that playfulness while also making you feel a little bad for the guy. I say a little bad because it’s very obvious who has the power and control in this:

I can't relate to desperation My give-a-fucks are on vacation And I got this one boy and he won't stop calling When they act this way, I know I got 'em

We’ve all known someone who is casually seeing someone and they’re just way crazier about the person they’re seeing than the other is for them. That’s not to say she doesn’t sound invested in this guy during the song, but you get the feeling one of them knows it’s a fun little fling and the other is starting to get obsessed and isn’t seeing things that way. 

It’s not hard to see why he’s getting addicted. I’m hooked on this song the same way dude is hooked on Sabrina. This song has this utterly hypnotic quality to it and at the 1:09 mark when you start hearing “Yes” after every line it reflects getting that hit, that thing you want once you’re addicted and craving more. “Soft skin and I perfumed it for ya” (Yes). “I know I Mountain Dew it for ya” (Yes). “That morning coffee, brewed it for ya” (Yes). It’s a small detail, but I always try to stress that the small details matter and always add up to something bigger. The more you listen, the more you get hooked on her the same way the guy in the song is getting hooked.

Now that I’ve mentioned it, can we talk about that Mountain Dew line? I’m sure some people think it’s a stupid and bad line, but those people are absolutely wrong. It's silly on the surface but works well as a clever double entendre ("I mount and do it for ya"). There’s four lines in this song that I could see somebody writing off as “bad lyrics.” The list includes:

“That’s that me espresso” (A little clunky, but does what it needs to do in order to set up a good metaphor for being the thing someone is addicted to)

“Move it up, down, left, right, oh / Switch it up like Nintendo” (Sounds like a joke bar your friend would spit in the car while making a joke about bad rappers who think they’re geniuses)

“My honeybee, come and get this pollen” (This wouldn’t sound out of place if it was said at the end of a James Bond film)

“I know I Mountain Dew it for ya” (This has definitely been said by a man who thinks he’s a sex god but only lasts the amount of time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket)

The reason I put all of these lines in an organized list is to show one other thing this song does right: This is a silly song and it basks in the fact that it’s a silly and fun little song.

There’s a quick moment at 2:16, where Sabrina just says the word “stupid” before the song launches into the chorus again. I imagine that’s at the expense of the guy in the song, but I also treat it as her wink-and-nod to me that she’s aware this whole song is just silly, innocent fun and that I too should treat it as such. It doesn’t take anything away from the song, not one bit. If anything, it keeps it light and enhances everything it does right. If Taylor had said “I know I Mountain Dew it for ya” at ANY point during TTPD’s runtime, the masses would’ve erupted with laughter, scorn, and enough posts that you’d never hear the end of it. It works for Sabrina because a lot of her music is more upbeat than Taylor’s recent stuff has been and silly lines like that are quickly becoming her bread and butter. One of the biggest charms about her biggest hit from last year (“Nonsense”) is that it ends with literal nonsense bars that have nothing to do with the rest of the song: “This song catchier than chickenpox is / I bet your house is where my other sock is / Woke up this morning, thought I’d write a pop hit, ha-ha / How quickly can you take your clothes off? Pop quiz.” She’s taken that joke further by making up different stupid and silly outros every night she performs it just to get a laugh out of the audience. My personal favorite one: "This crowd is giving me all the endorphins / I wish someone would rearrange my organs / Philly is the city I was born in". 

The last thing we need to talk about is the absolutely gorgeous and wonderful music video she made for this. It’s a rare Dave Meyers W in this day and age, as he’s responsible for two of the absolute worst videos I’ve seen this decade: Ed Sheeran's "Bad Habits" and the Megan Thee Stallion and Dua Lipa collab "Sweetest Pie." That said, when he’s good, he’s GOOD and it makes you forget every bad video he’s ever made (which is more than just the two I mentioned...)

The cinematography is gorgeous, the choreography is great, Sabrina looks utterly stunning and living her summer beach movie fantasies. Those shots of her doing sixties dances on a surfboard are fantastic and look like they’re straight out of a beach movie from that decade. The whole video has a sixties beach movie look to it, from Sabrina’s outfits all the way to the overall look and glow of the setting. Everything you imagine about a perfect summer is captured beautifully in this video. It’s a fun video that reflects the song in all the best ways. If pop music is escapism and is something designed to take you to another world for a short time, this song and video do just that. We’re all better for it.

Pop songs can be totally serious works of art, but “Espresso” proves they don’t always have to be. Sometimes a song can just be light and fun. “Espresso” knows what it is and it’s excited to be that for you. If you want to start buying stock in songs that might get the illustrious and coveted “Song of the Summer” status, I’m telling you to invest and put all of your money in this song right now because we’re going to the moon and beyond with it. The video for the song ends with Sabrina getting arrested for stealing a guy’s credit card and throwing him overboard at the beginning, with the final shot being the cop car she’s in having a speaker on top playing a little snippet of what will supposedly be Sabrina’s next song. Whatever she ends up doing next, I’m here for it. “Espresso” made me a fan and I’m excited to see whatever else she’s got because this song is everything I love about pop music packed neatly into three and a half minutes. This image from Twitter (Formerly Twitter) user @___bodacious sums up my feelings on Miss. Carpenter really well:

Update: I just found out she's 4'11. That's probably why I think she's a real-life Polly Pocket

Sabrina Carpenter is like if a Polly Pocket gained sentience and started singing pop songs.

The current state of pop girlies is so funny like

Ariana Grande: getting dragged for homewrecking with the guy who played SpongeBob in the SpongeBob musical

Taylor Swift: dropping her worst album in years about how deeply obsessed she is with Matty Healy

Billie Eilish, for some reason:

do you ever kinda wonder how music is gonna evolve further? like where could music possibly go from here???? what new genres are gonna spring up that we’ve never imagined before???? do u think beethoven ever thought of trap music in his musty lifetime or

Tumblr in general is just a very antisocial website...like at its core I think that's my primary beef with the tone of the userbase here. Everything is such a hyper-competitive weird little insular wank fest and it's not really aimed at anything effective. The handful of people on here who I'm still friendly with all do not do this but I have enough posts go viral & see content from friends of friends etc to know it's still a thing. Like why are people here so wildly insecure about what other people are doing at all times...it's not natural. Other people are all we have. And this is NOT a thinly veiled "let's all get along with hateful bigots" thing I'm literally just saying that on a website designed for sharing your specific little weird interests, why would you waste your own time complaining about what people you can easily choose not to see and talk to are doing...or why wouldn't you share the things you like with them.

Portraits of the Stones

There is a conversation to be had about the fact that Taylor Swift's album is being played in its entirety across all of iHeartRadio's 868 stations, pushing out the opportunities other artists might have had to get radioplay. That's the literal definition of a monopoly. No wonder she'll hit the top of the radio play charts with this maneuver, because at least 65 minutes (if not the back side of the album, which would take it to nearly twice that length) across EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT STATIONS will be dedicated to her, artificially boosting her radio play and decreasing everyone else's. In this essay I will—

Happy 4/20

Sabrina Carpenter is like if a Polly Pocket gained sentience and started singing pop songs.

I hope every single individual that thinks like this gets shot in the gut.

All this about not getting to see John Lennon on twitter but I think the real tragedy is that Freddie Mercury never had an instagram

the internet has really done something to me I forgot that No Doubt was a band so when I saw that pic of Olivia Rodrigo in a shirt that said "I <3 ND" I was like wow queen of pulling for the neurodivergent community....