Sabrina Carpenter: How the Espresso Singer Became Gen Z Pop Queen

At least once a week, a lyric by 25-year-old pop star Sabrina Carpenter will flood my brain like an intrusive thought. Take the nu-disco neologism of “Espresso” (“That’s that me espresso”) or any of the woozy entreaties of “Please Please Please.” Her songs are earworms, and soon there will be plenty more Karaoke fodder thanks to the release of her new album, Short n’ Sweet.

Although many may have heard “Espresso” on repeat this summer, it’s telling that the caffeinated bop isn’t even Carpenter’s biggest hit. That accolade belongs to “Please Please Please,” the winking, country-inflected number that scored Carpenter her first No. 1 in June, bolstered by a music video featuring her Oscar-winning beau Barry Keoghan. Rumors of their split are unlikely to dampen the fanfare surrounding her album’s arrival. A month later, Carpenter broke records in the UK, becoming the first female artist to hold the top two positions on the singles chart for three consecutive weeks.

Both tracks, featured on TikTok’s Top 10 songs of the summer, are singles off her new record, which is out this Friday and has a good chance of becoming the pop album of 2024. It’s funny to recall how only last year, Carpenter was deemed a member of “pop’s middle class” in The New York Times; now, she’s royalty. Carpenter’s rise has been slow and steady, with Short n’ Sweet being her sixth album. While she has had hits along the way, including “Nonsense” and “Feather” last year, nothing compares to this moment.

It’s safe to say that Carpenter is part of the moment right now. Alongside Brat star Charli XCX and Midwest princess Chappell Roan, the Pennsylvania-born artist is reaping the rewards of a decades-long grind. It’s no coincidence that she’s found her biggest crowd with her most effervescent hits; they are irresistible in their sweetness. Carpenter is self-consciously saccharine, embodying a macaron dipped in chocolate. Her lyrics project confidence that feels empowering to imitate, even for just two and a half minutes.

Again, she has been at this for a while, and success took its time coming. Carpenter released her first album at 15 under Disney’s Hollywood Records while starring as the BFF in the tween sitcom Girl Meets World. “I’m 900 inappropriate jokes away from being a Disney actor, but people still see me that way,” she said in a recent interview.

Cheeky innuendos have become an integral part of Carpenter’s language. Online, you’ll find thousands of videos dedicated to her live outros for her flirty single “Nonsense” – a verse that changes depending on the city she’s in and ranges from X-rated explicit to seductively arch. Earlier this summer, appearing on stage at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in sky-high pink platforms, Carpenter bypassed the broadcaster’s request to keep things kid-friendly. “BBC said I should keep it PG/ BBC, I wish I had it in me. There’s a double meaning if you dig deep,” she teased, blowing a kiss to the crowd.

Carpenter’s music is absurdly fun to sing along to, not just because the words can elicit grins from the most serious listeners, but also due to how she sings them. She has a knack for comic enunciation, like on “Please Please Please” when her angelic girlish register swoops to a jilted grumble. “The little vocal runs she does are so bizarre and unique – they’re doing this really odd, classic, almost yodel-y country thing,” said pop savant Jack Antonoff, who worked on about half of Short n’ Sweet with her. “She’s becoming one of the biggest young pop stars, and that song is such a statement of ­expressing yourself, not just lyrically, but sonically.”

Carpenter’s ascent was intertwined with that of another “big young pop star.” In 2021, she made headlines as the “blonde girl” in Olivia Rodrigo’s smash-hit “Drivers License.” Rodrigo’s ex-boyfriend, Joshua Bassett, allegedly left her for Carpenter in 2020. In response, Carpenter wrote “Because I Liked a Boy” from Emails I Can’t Send in 2022.

Neither musician confirmed the stories, but the rumor mill did its thing, introducing Carpenter to the mainstream. When the tabloids lost interest in the gossip, people stayed for the music. Emails I Can’t Send became her highest-charting LP, reaching No. 23 on the Billboard albums chart.

For the past decade, pop has been dominated by the hushed tones of bedroom pop, known for its emotionally excavating lyrics and sparse instrumentation. Think Clairo, Beabadoobee, and Holly Humberstone. By contrast, Carpenter’s music demands a stage, loudspeakers – and preferably, a loud crowd. Her brazen lyrics and amped-up energy blew the hinges off the bedroom pop door, letting in a gust of sweetly perfumed pop music with a capital P. That grandiosity is backed by her gift for exuberant performances; ever the Disney star, Carpenter is a consummate professional on stage, executing precise choreography in teetering high heels while delighting crowds with a flick of her perfect blonde blowout and spontaneous banter.

Unlike bedroom pop, there is nothing particularly poignant about a lyric like “I know I Mountain Dew it for ya” – and Carpenter herself has expressed insecurity about pop music’s ability to connect with people, given its frothy nature. Initially, she was hesitant to include “Nonsense” on Emails I Can’t Send, fearing it would detract from the more serious themes she explores on the record, such as slut-shaming and her dad’s past infidelity.

Carpenter now understands the validity of both these facets of herself. “Those real moments where I’m just a 25-year-old girl who’s super horny are as real as when I’m going through a heartbreak and I’m miserable and I don’t feel like a person,” she told Rolling Stone in June this year. You only have to look at the crowd of any Sabrina Carpenter concert for proof of pop music’s ability to connect.

As for her new album, it’s hard to overstate expectations. When you come out swinging with hits like “Espresso,” the third-fastest song to reach a billion streams on Spotify, where do you go from there? Carpenter has kept quiet about what fans can expect but hinted that the album takes inspiration from Nineties pop.

She’s also mentioned plans to expand on the genre-hopping of her last album – which included folk-pop, alt-pop, and electro-pop. Whatever it is, please – please, please – let the album live up to the hype.

Source: The Independent