Ladies, is it gay to obsess over your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend? Though Sabrina Carpenter laments on her new album, Short n’ Sweet, that “the Lord forgot my gay awakening,” she certainly doesn’t mind coming off a little fruity. She and Scream Queen Jenna Ortega attempt to murder each other in a campy, bloodthirsty music video for “Taste” — and then make out, in a brief tease that’s already made the rounds online.
“Taste” is a spiteful warning to an ex’s new girl that she’ll never escape Carpenter’s shadow, no matter how hard she tries. Though she hasn’t confirmed who it’s about, fans have connected the song to Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, who briefly got back together after Mendes was seen out and about with Carpenter last year. “Now I’m gone, but you’re still laying / Next to me, one degree of separation,” Carpenter taunts. “You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you.” These are the sort of juicy lyrics that make you wonder: For efficiency’s sake, why not cut out the middleman and just kiss each other? “Taste” plays with the concept, killing off the boyfriend after Ortega shoots Carpenter, Carpenter stabs an Ortega voodoo doll, and so on in nods to classic films like Death Becomes Her, Kill Bill, and Ginger Snaps. But in the end, they’re just kicking it at the funeral as platonic besties.
Still, the song’s conceit is spicy — and perhaps taken from the playbook of Carpenter’s ex’s ex, Olivia Rodrigo, who has played with this same homoerotic tension on songs like “Obsessed” and “Deja Vu.” “His jokes hit different, guess who he learned that from” is basically “She doesn’t know / That I was the one who taught you Billy Joel” in different fonts. Ortega is great, but imagine how genius it would have been if Rodrigo had co-starred in the music video instead?