When the history books on 2020s music get written, the enterprising poptimists in charge will no doubt include Sabrina Carpenter, who’s gone from “Tate McRae is the ceiling” to “world-dominating pop star” seemingly overnight. But they’d be remiss if they named “Espresso” as the song that chartered her course. While this summer’s breakout hit — along with its twee, chart-topping follow-up, “Please Please Please” — made the singer a household name, both songs were building out a blueprint Carpenter drafted three years prior. Everything audiences love about Sabrina Carpenter now — her giggly, winking sense of humor, her love of gibberish lyrics — she beta-tested on “Nonsense,” a one-time deep cut turned viral hit off her otherwise forgotten 2022 album, Emails I Can’t Send.
Before “Nonsense,” Carpenter was just another Disney-approved actress signed to Mickey’s label, trying and failing to find a coherent persona. On Hollywood Records, she released four albums of amicable but nonessential songs in a variety of genres: folk pop, house, pop-rock. Her approach didn’t congeal into an obvious package the way it did for Carpenter’s Disney predecessors, like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez. At first, striking out on her own didn’t work either. Her debut album with Island Records, the intimate, bedroom pop-y Emails, had a bland yet overstuffed lead track in “Skinny Dipping,” which failed to chart, as did the second and third singles, “Fast Times” and “Vicious.” Making matters worse: Before the album came out, pop fans had already cast Carpenter as the home-wrecking blonde foe to Olivia Rodrigo’s relatable brunette in the rumored love triangle with actor Joshua Bassett — a role that contextualized her in another person’s story instead of her own.
That changed once Carpenter started touring. “Nonsense” was still a B-side when she hit the road in September 2022, but it quickly became a live staple, thanks to its outro, which she customized with localized PG-13 rhymes. “I’ve got a personality but no tits / This song is not about Joshua Bassett / Los Angeles, your energy is big dick,” she sang in L.A. and promptly went viral on TikTok. In Argentina, she said, “How to ride it, I can think of five ways / My head goes so hard, I’m giving migraines / How loud do you get in Buenos Aires?” (“‘Nonsense’ happened like a storm in my life,” Carpenter later told The Guardian, “So I didn’t really have time to consider one too many dick jokes.”) Four months after the tour started, the song peaked at No. 56 — far more traction than she’d managed to achieve with Emails’ planned singles. By the time she was opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, “Nonsense” had become the definitive Sabrina Carpenter track.
Like “Espresso,” “Nonsense” is packed with lines that don’t quite work on the page. In the chorus, she uses gibberish to explain that, when she gets close to the guy, “My tongue goes numb, sounds like bleh, blah, blee,” selling the sound effects through sheer nonchalance. Later, she announces an octave change by literally singing, “it feels so good I had to jump the octave!” with all the chutzpah her four-foot-11 stature can muster. While much of Emails is burdened by a sense of self-seriousness about what people think of her, “Nonsense” is lighthearted and playful — a song about nothing more than her liking a boy.
She quickly replicated the approach on “Feather,” a new cut off Emails’ deluxe edition, which peaked at No. 21 on Hot 100. The song, which features “Nonsense”-y lines like “Your signals are mixed, you act like a bitch,” also arrived with a stupid-funny heretical music video shot in a church, which later led to the suspension of a priest. (Carpenter responded to the controversy with the same wink-and-nod persona she had formed on “Nonsense,” telling Variety that “Jesus was a carpenter.”)
The success of “Feather” and “Nonsense” provided Carpenter with a path forward. While writing Short n’ Sweet, her new album, she injected lead single “Espresso” with now-famous line readings on “I’m working late, ’cause I’m a singer” and “That’s that me, espresso.” “Please Please Please” worked on the same level, thanks to her soprano-gone-basso interpretation of the word “motherfucker.” Soon enough, the bubbly approach she first showed on stage with “Nonsense” was bleeding into every public appearance and branding opportunity: a Van Leeuwen espresso-flavored ice cream; a music video in which she tries on goth bisexuality with all the edge of a Monster High Doll. Even the title of the new record, Short n’ Sweet, was designed for maximum adorability. Before “Nonsense” blew up, Carpenter was covering emotionally taxing songs onstage like “Bust Your Windows” by Jazmine Sullivan and “It’s Too Late” by Carole King. Now, she performs the smirking Nancy Sinatra classic “Boots Are Made for Walking” with Kacey Musgraves.
Looking back, it feels like Sabrina Carpenter was destined to have a pop moment, thanks to a combination of access, talent, and ambition. She just needed to figure out how to channel it all into a compelling package. Since then, she’s only broken character onstage once: At this year’s Coachella, in the second part of a new “Nonsense” outro: “He’s drinking my bathwater like it’s red wine,” she sang, with a flutter of the eyelashes, before adding something that wasn’t cute. It was a prophecy: “Coachella, I’ll see you back here when I headline.”
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