How Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso became the song of the summer

The American singer-songwriter’s light-hearted disco-bop has become inescapable in recent months, and here, experts analyze why it’s had such a major impact on pop culture – and our summer holidays.

There is no official standard for determining the “Song of the Summer.” 1999 New York Times column Music critic Ann Powers concluded that the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” is the anthem of the season. Billboard and the UK’s Official Charts Company now compile insightful “Songs of the Summer” charts based on cumulative sales, airplay, and streaming over a period of time, but part of the concept’s appeal is its somewhat nebulous nature: based on collective consensus rather than cold statistics. Songs of the summer are the songs that feel like the mid-year soundtrack, even if you’re not consciously listening to them. You keep hearing them on the radio, in the bar, on someone’s smartphone.

Often, it’s the song that truly captures the gentle, breezy ideal of summer – think Harry Styles’ Watermelon Sugar in 2020 or Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass in 2011. While this year has seen Charli XCX’s sunny, hedonistic album Brat become a cultural phenomenon and Shaboozie’s anguished country bop A Bar Song (Tipsy) top the Billboard Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks, there’s one song that has harnessed this sense of limitless possibility better than any other: Espresso by US singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter. “There’s a lightness and warmth to Espresso’s funky sound that makes it perfect for easy summer listening,” says entertainment and culture journalist Holly Geraghty.

When Carpenter announced the release of Espresso in April, she said She said she “just wanted to get a little song out before Coachella.” The song was released on the 11th of that month, the day before her first performance at the California music festival. But the point is, the single’s mid-spring debut allowed it to penetrate people’s consciousness and grow in popularity heading into the summer. Espresso peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 22. In the UK, it was number one for five consecutive weeks, from May 5 to July 21. During a concert in Las Vegas on May 19, pop superstar Adele performed the song: He told the audience She said that Espresso was “my favorite” because she related to the lyric, “I’m a singer, so I work late.”

But when Espresso was released in April, another catchy phrase started trending on social media: “That’s me, Espresso,” Bradley Stern, a music journalist and co-host of a pop culture podcast, said. Legendary Onlysays its “silly, absurd” nature makes the song prime meme material. He suggests that pop fans’ obsession with the lyrics is in part due to its cavalier approach to grammar; Ariana Grande’s similarly nonsensical lyric “Now I’m real, I’m who I really am” from her 2014 hit “Break Free” has been equally as well-received before. He also thinks Carpenter’s quirky chorus hook “piques people’s curiosity” in a similar style to the onomatopoeic title of Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam,” a Song of the Summer 2023 contender.

Beyond its intriguingly offbeat ending, Geraghty says Carpenter’s hit is full of “the kind of sassy pop lyrics she writes so well.” Overall, the song hinges on the idea that her partner is so obsessed with her that she suffers from insomnia. “Tell me you can’t sleep, baby, I know, that’s my espresso,” she sings in the chorus. Elsewhere, her lyrics are peppered with syntax-busting confidence. “I walked in the house and made my dreams come true for you,” Carpenter brags. “A summer song should be fun first and foremost, and Espresso is one of those self-love anthems that makes pop fans feel like heroes (in Gen Z terms),” Geraghty says. When Carpenter sings, “I can’t relate to despair,” it doesn’t feel forced, it feels empowering.

Carpenter wrote Espresso with producer Julian Bunetta and lyricists Amy Allen and Steph Jones. Popular She says that when she heard the song, she “immediately got a beach vibe,” and so the playful video sees Carpenter picking up a man’s credit card after he’s just fallen off a speedboat and enjoying a lavish day on the beach while being fanned by men holding palm leaves. The video captures what Stern calls Carpenter’s “cheeky wink-wink persona,” but Stern doesn’t necessarily think it was key to Espresso’s success. “I think it was the song that took off culturally, not the video,” he says.

The song was crafted to sound “summery,” says Charlie Harding, a music journalist, songwriter and producer who co-hosts a podcast about the making and meaning of pop music. Switch On PopCarpenter’s vocals are “mixed to emphasize the breathy quality of a fresh summer breeze.” Dr. Joe BennettA musicologist from Berklee College of Music said Carpenter’s “breathy singing” is “a layered, [vocal] “There are harmonies in every chorus,” he said, including some that emphasize certain lines, such as “this boy.” He said this, combined with “handclaps that double up on the snare drum,” makes it “a song that gets you involved,” making it even more addictive.

Harding also believes that Espresso’s expertly layered production evokes a “nostalgia for summers gone by” that will resonate with listeners across generations: “The sampled organic drums are reminiscent of 2000s hip-hop, the synth bass is straight out of 1990s R&B, the synth leads are a throwback to the 1980s, and the Nile Rodgers-esque guitar part sparkles like a 1970s disco ball,” he says. Specifically, he suggests that “the same mid-tempo, summery production can be found in the song’s more recent summer-friendly cuts.” Miley Cyrus’ A party that was a huge hit in the US in 2009.

Bennett positions Espresso as part of the ongoing “disco revival” that began with Daft Punk’s 2013 hit “Get Lucky” and continued with more recent hits such as Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” (2020) and Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” (2022). He notes that Espresso’s “laid-back” tempo of 104 BPM is “pretty slow for a disco-influenced song,” but is still “close” to some classics of the genre, including “disco-influenced songs.” Abba’s “Take a Chance on Me” and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” while Stern notes that the song’s “low-key disco groove” bears “certain similarities” to Doja Cat’s 2020 smash “Say So,” which weaves elements of funk and disco into a blistering piece of pop-rap.

And yet, like every song of the summer, Espresso is more than the sum of its parts. As Harding points out, “Every songwriter is trying to write the catchiest song possible with a compelling concept, a memorable melody, unique production, and that magic ‘it’ factor that will deliver directly to the hearts of millions.” In Espresso’s case, that ‘it’ factor might just be the fact that Carpenter felt like the right artist at the right time. Though he’s only 25, the Pennsylvania-born star has been releasing music for over a decade, slowly building a loyal and knowledgeable fanbase along the way.

Carpenter’s career really took off in 2013 when she landed a lead role in the Disney Channel sitcom Girl Meets World. The following year, she released her folk-inspired debut single, “Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying,” on Disney-owned Hollywood Records, the same label that has previously produced successful singer-actresses such as Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez. Carpenter released four albums with Hollywood, but her success was unspectacular and steady until she moved to another label, Island Records, in 2021. By this point, her earlier folk- and country-based work had been replaced by a glossier sound influenced by dance-pop and R&B.

In January of that year, Carpenter scored her first hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Top 40 with “Skin”, a synth-pop ballad that some fans interpreted as a “response song”. Olivia Rodrigo’s The single “Driver’s License” was released around the same time. At the time, Carpenter was romantically involved with Rodrigo’s co-star in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Joshua Bassett, sparking rumors of a love triangle. In “Driver’s License,” Rodrigo sings, “And you’re probably with that blonde girl that always made me doubt myself.” Just two weeks later, Carpenter’s “Skin” finds the singer mumbling, “Maybe I didn’t mean it. Maybe ‘blonde’ was the only rhyme I ever had.” Carpenter The proposal was rejected Skin says she “reached out to one person,” but the online conspiracy certainly helped her rise to fame.

In late 2022, she gained attention again on social media when her playful pop-R&B track “Nonsense,” from her fifth album, Emails I Can’t Send, went viral on TikTok. Rewrite the lyrics of the ironic ending The song, which referenced the city she was in when she performed it live, really captured her charming and sassy personality. Taylor Swift She’ll be performing on her hugely successful Eras tour from August 2023 until March this year. Stern believes all of this groundwork, given a slight boost by her tabloid-friendly relationship with Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan, created a “perfect storm” for Espresso to skyrocket her career. “To Gen Z, she was already what we’d call the ‘main pop girl,'” he says, “but I think Espresso has made other generations take notice of her more.”

Carpenter has already proven that Espresso was no fluke. Her next single, “Please Please Please,” a country-inspired disco song she co-wrote with Swift’s producer Jack Antonoff, topped the Billboard Hot 100 in June, surpassing Espresso in the U.S. charts. Geraghty believes Carpenter is breaking through now, after a decade of hard work, because she’s “irreverent and doesn’t take herself too seriously,” which feels “fresh in today’s pop world,” where “a certain kind of seriousness was starting to take hold.” By this point, Geraghty says, Carpenter had honed “her own unpretentious musical formula, which strikes the right balance between accessible and glamorous.”

Still, the best gauge of Carpenter’s post-Espresso brilliance will be this Friday’s release of Short and Sweet, her sixth studio album but the first to be released with such high expectations. Lauren Kreisler, director of brand and digital for the Official Charts Company, points out that Carpenter spent 12 weeks at No. 1 in the UK this summer (seven with Espresso, followed by five with Please Please Please), and adds drily: “But converting our country of tea drinkers into espresso drinkers is quite another!”

Whatever happens next, Carpenter has given us an uplifting summer hit that still feels strong as fall closes in, and for now, the caffeine buzz shows no signs of fading.