Sabrina Carpenter is one of the It Girls of Summer 2024 with her back-to-back pop hits “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.” So naturally, she’s the next guest on Hot Ones, where she dished on the craft of songwriting and her Beatles fandom while breathing heavily through intense hot sauce consumption. “I do like to pay attention to if people can understand lyrics, because so much of what I like is the punchline. And if people don’t know the punchline, it’s like, waste of 30 seconds. That’s how I feel about ‘me espresso,’ I’ve heard a lot of people that were like, ‘She should’ve said that’s that blonde espresso, duh,’” she says. “But this one for me was like, ‘me espresso’ just felt like the right thing to say, and it rhymes with the line before it, just all the reasons. And I just think it’s so funny, like, maybe everyone’s right!”
But taking advice from the masses isn’t always the best outcome. Carpenter explains that, creatively, learning to attune her work to her own instincts has shaped her upcoming album Short N’ Sweet. As a performer, hearing directly from the fans can be jarring, too. Carpenter often stops her shows to talk with her audience, because she likes “to take people out of the show for a second, it just makes it feel a little bit more like a slumber party or something.” But on one occasion, “Someone told me their dad left,” she shares with a nervous giggle. “This is not funny, by the way, this is how I felt! … You know, you have people recording, being like, ‘Oh, so she makes light of people’s dad’s leaving—’ it’s like, ‘No! Oh my gosh!’”
It’s a tricky balance to get real with her supporters while also trying to “entertain and banter” during a show, but “usually the person has a good sense of humor if they’re telling me that their dad left in front of a crowd of a couple thousand people,” she says. “So I was taken aback, and then somehow it turned into a really beautiful conversation, and I was able to segue into my next song.” Looks like Carpenter is doing a pretty good job navigating her rapid ascent to pop’s upper echelon.