Memes, streams, popstar of dreams: How Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso took over the world

Since its conception in Italy in 1901, mankind has through the years been more than partial to starting its day with an espresso. In 2024, not much has changed – we still start off with one as a matter of urgency in the morning, only now we’ve replaced the coffee with a simple stream of Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter instead. In the space of three weeks, the song has singlehandedly managed to destroy espressos and become a morning ritual of its own. A day cannot go by where I don’t start it with a stream of Espresso, which turns into the banger being queued three times. Or five. You see, what Sabrina Carpenter has crafted here is a slice of pop music that has in less than a month morphed into a world conquering juggernaut – and has ascended to her biggest hit ever that’s beefing Taylor Swift for the top spot of the charts. How did we get here? How did the humble Sabrina Carpenter craft a juggernaut like Espresso that everyone and their nan is obsessed with?

The obsessed nature of the world with Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter is so fascinating because it has transcended the usual pop worship of gays on Twitter and the depths of the Popheads Subreddit and has reached places untouched by most mere mortals. Espresso is the type of song that not only has the pop adoring queers of the internet falling at Sabrina Carpenter’s feet, but also has my mum bobbing along in the car as well. The other day, the sun was shining and me and my sister went for breakfast. On the way back I begged for a single track to add to the queue (I’m usually forbidden, she runs the aux like a military operation) – but she conceded. We listened five times in a row. She sings it with me daily now.

What is it about Espresso that transcended gender, generation, time and space? Hard to say, but in my humble opinion it is the perfect winning formula of sugary pop ridiculousness, nu-disco and lyrics so quotable that it’s hard to imagine life without them. This is a song that has one liners as instantly memorable as “Switch it up like Nintendo”, “I can’t relate to desperation/My give a fucks are on vacation”, “I know I Mountain Dew it for ya” and, the GOAT, “Walked in and dream-came-trued it for ya”. What makes Espresso so brilliant is the conviction Sabrina Carpenter says things that don’t make sense, but make total sense. It reminds me of the Whedonspeak heyday of Buffy sang to production echoing the heights of Say So by Doja Cat. As Jeremy D Larson says so perfectly in the Pitchfork review of Espresso, “Pop’s disco revival is wearing a bit thin, but if you can do it with this much élan, this kind of cleverness, this singularly fizzy and bizarre vibe, maybe it can last just one more summer.”

Take all this and then throw in the fact socials are full of memes and general adoration for it, you’ve got the song of the summer. Sabrina Carpenter has not been shy of huge success before, but with the release of Espresso she has got people so obsessed it’s instantly catapulted her to another level. I’ve always liked her work, but with Espresso she’s hit a brand new stride. As of writing this today, she has made it to the top of global Spotify for the first time ever. Nothing to sniff at and no easy feat at the best of times, but the fact she has managed to do that mere days after TAYLOR SWIFT released an album and still has got there is pretty unprecedented. She worked late because she’s a singer and gave the world the song of the summer. Godspresso is here to stay.

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Sabrina Carpenter Espresso imagery via Island Records.