Can’t sleep? Blame espresso. No, not the coffee, Sabrina Carpenter’s breezy new single. Since the pop singer dropped “Espresso†last month, its grammatically incorrect hook — “That’s that me, espresso†— has taken over pop fans’ brains. Is Carpenter simply saying she’s the espresso or that she gives a specific type of espresso to men she’s into? Or maybe the guy she’s singing about is so hot that she temporarily forgot how grammar worked? On Twitter and TikTok, the song has been memed to death; outside, it’s quickly heralding the beginning of summer with its rise to No. 4 on the Hot 100.
But why can’t we stop saying “That’s that me, espresso,†among the many other odd lines in this song? Vulture asked Ekkarat Ruanglertsilp, a linguistics professor at Hampton University who has done extensive work on language and pop music (and even published a paper on Ariana Grande’s thank u, next). Even though Ruanglertsilp admits that pop lyrics are “not meant to be taken seriously,†he was eager to do just that with Carpenter’s latest.
When you first heard “Espresso,†what stood out to you about it?
I thought it was cute. It’s fun and lively and very bubblegum pop. I love this type of music, and I’m a fan of Sabrina, so I know this is her sound. But it’s a bit more sensual than her other songs.
“That’s that me, espresso†has burrowed into everybody’s head. What do you make of that line?
I always believe that pop music, especially bubblegum pop, is not meant to be taken seriously. So “That’s that me, espresso,†that’s not grammatically correct, right? The reduplication of the word that is there to foster a sense of playfulness, to catch attention. I think it also has to do with the rhyme scheme and the number of syllables, to make each word fall into place.
By reduplication, do you just mean repetition?
Yeah, reduplication means the repetitions of certain words.
Then there’s the metaphor of it, too — she’s not espresso, but she’s comparing herself to it to keep this guy up.
It conveys a sense of power. She has this power of attracting her boy, to have him wrapped around her finger.
What else linguistically is going on in this song?
We use the term conversions when a word changes its part of speech, like from a verb to a noun. For example, “My give-a-fucks are on vacation.†So in this case, you combine them into one word.
That makes me think of another line: “I dream-come-true’d it to you.†It’s kind of the reverse of that, of taking the noun and turning it into a verb, right?
Yeah. It’s not just a phrase anymore, but in this case it’s being used into one word. Or “I perfumed it†from a noun to a verb. I’m not really sure about “Mountain Dew it to you†in this case. I was like, Oh, it might be something that can quench someone’s thirst. There might be some semantic shift here as well, when the original meaning gets altered a little bit. “I do it for you†could mean other things now rather than just soda. In this case, it could be that, okay, it’s caffeine — it’s an energizer or something like that.
The line “I’m working late ’cause I’m a singer†is funny to me because that’s when the song isn’t relatable to everybody else — we’re not all pop singers. But it’s also one of the lines that people are latching on to the most.
I analyzed it more in terms of gender roles. It shows me that she has an untraditional women’s role. I’m actually a singer. I’m not subject to just the domestic realm. So it shows some power as well. Then “My honeybee, come and get this pollen†— that can also be interpreted as a sexual innuendo. That’s one form of female empowerment: to own one’s sexuality.
Some of the lines that aren’t grammatically correct remind me of other pop songs, like in “Break Free,†when Ariana Grande says, “Now that I’ve become who I really are.†Those often end up being the catchiest lines in the song. Why is that?
I’m not really sure. In 2007, there was this song by Timbaland called “The Way I Are.†At the time, I was still learning English, and I was like, Huh, this is interesting. That’s not how I learned English. But it also might be related to an issue of a nonstandard form of English. If you talk about dialects, for example, African American English in particular, they have their own set of rules for grammar. And sometimes these linguistic features get appropriated.
I also associate grammatical oddities in pop lyrics with Max Martin, who co-wrote “Break Free,†and Swedish songwriters. Martin has said before that it comes from approaching English as a non-native speaker and thinking about how something sounds versus what it means. There was no big Swedish hitmaker in the room for “Espresso,†but it does feel like a nod to something like that, too.
That made me think of Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time.†I think the hook’s meaning was very different than when Max Martin meant it originally. It’s specific to how the audience perceives it. Originally, “hit me†was made to mean “call me.â€
You were talking a lot about “Espresso†in terms of empowerment. I feel like that runs counter to this silliness that Sabrina herself plays up, especially as a blonde, conventionally attractive woman. So some people have received this song, like, Oh, there’s not much going on here. But you’re saying it’s the total opposite — there’s a lot happening.
Another way to look at it: Could she be seen as a femme fatale here? I mean, it’s not a new concept. A lot of pop artists have done this before: Britney, Madonna, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande. So when we just listen to the lyrics without being critical, it might mean portraying this woman as being a bimbo or something like that. But if we really look at the lyrics — if we look at the social ideologies behind these words, behind these linguistic strategies — we can see that Sabrina is the one holding the power.