Sabrina Carpenter – Taste
That’s a wrap on September! But don’t fear, the wait until we return in October will be short (and… sweet? This sounded better in my head)…
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Katherine St. Asaph: Carpenter releases another Haim-esque conglomeration of pop-rock hits past: Sheryl Crow (sunny clapalongs), Gwen Stefani (safe shiny tude and various vocal intonations, like on “exact”), and frenemy Olivia Rodrigo (subject matter and vibe). On her album, she has better.
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Alfred Soto: I can hear the money: the guitars on “Taste” twang with more color than on any pop single since Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U.” This time her single entendres eschew the affectedly sultry for the self-aware gadfly.
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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: A retconned version of “Deja Vu” — wow, that feels like a lifetime ago? — where instead of feeling pain in the boy’s propensity for repetition, you’re content with rubbing in the other girl’s face how you got there first. It pulls off a funny trick: I can marvel at the music video and metanarrative in group chats, and have the clever lyrical conceit stuck in my head, without remembering what it sounds like at all, save for the heavenly “la-la-la-la-la-la”s. It’s actually really difficult to make songs as clever as “Taste” sound so dumb and simple.
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Ian Mathers: It’s not a problem that the video is more fun than the song, but it does increasingly feel like “Espresso” was a fluke.
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Nortey Dowuona: Toddstradamus called it. For once, he was right, and thank God he was. Also, Julian Bunetta with another hit. Is he a good luck charm?
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Mark Sinker: A strong way to understand pop music in the UK right now is via the medium of sonorous Victorian poetry about ancient classical Rome, in which the forces arrayed against all that is noble can be held off by a courageous few at the head of just one slender bridge: “In yon strait path a thousand / may well be stopped by three!” In this reading Noel (or Liam) is “Lars Porsena of Clusium” and “False Sextus” is Liam (or Noel, look it doesn’t matter, no one cares); the bridge is of course the Top of the Charts, and the “dauntless three” are Sabina’s singles since “Espresso” in April, right now clustered there, battling away. “The Great House of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more!” Let’s hope it shall, though! Or must the Republic of Pop fall?
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TA Inskeep: Sharp songwriting — that lyric in the chorus is so smart, so very Heathers — paired with just the right touch on Carpenter’s vocals. I’d normally say “+2 for the superb Death Becomes Her tribute video,” but the song is so good it doesn’t need it.
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Will Adams: On Short ‘n Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter comes up with a hundred ways to call her lover a fuckin’ dumbass, but on “Taste”, she takes aim at her ex’s rebound. This time, the daggers are dipped in honey; she tells the new girl that she’ll just have to taste her on his lips, but the subtext is that Sabrina kinda hopes she enjoys it. It’s wonderfully bratty (NB: not brat, but bratty), and the gleaming, if slightly generic, pop-rock arrangement helps make it her punchiest single to date.
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Jackie Powell: “Taste” has what’s best about “Please Please Please” and “Espresso” wrapped up in one 2:37 minute song. The melody and rhythm are addictive and combine disco (thanks, Ian Kirkpatrick!), a bit of country twang and “slacker rock,” which I guess is the title given to any song that sounds chill, sunny and easy-breezy. But in classic Sabrina Carpenter fashion, what sounds relaxed and light really isn’t, and the combination of seemingly frivolous surface and deeper lyrical meaning that she has mastered is on full display. Case in point are the laughs that she recorded right after she sings the final line in the bridge, “I’ve been known to share.” With the help of Julia Michaels — another songwriter known for more complex lyrics — Carpenter takes the narrative that Olivia Rodrigo played with on “Obsessed” and alters the conversation, talking directly to the other woman rather than about her. Sure, there’s been a lot of speculation about truly how fruity Carpenter is — the fact that she had women on the walls of her room growing up is a whole other story — but I leave each listen of “Taste” thinking about the mystery behind her intent. Why does she want the other woman to know how truly great she is? Is it platonic? Is it more? That confusion is what makes “Taste” as relatable as it is realistic.
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Jonathan Bradley: I wasn’t sure before, but OK: I’m on board with the Sabrina Carpenter character. She’s a fantastically campy high femme train wreck: neurotic but assertive; condescending but kinda dumb herself; uptight, but doing her best to be flirty. As an introduction to an album and a persona, “I leave quite an impression/five feet to be exact” is an all-timer, up there with “Teenage angst has paid off well/now I’m bored and old” or “Been through the ringer a couple times/I came out callous and cruel.” On “Taste,” Carpenter is sunny and mean, like a great soap opera villain, and she accentuates her ’70s adult-contempo arrangement with some great melodramatic touches: the Greek chorus appending “la-la-la-la-la” to the description of cunnilingus, say, or the sudden appearance of a girl gang to turn “know I was already there” into a shouted accusation. (It tries for the gleeful kitsch of Chappell Roan, but it’s really bratty in an Olivia Rodrigo sense, which is delightfully unbecoming for a 25-year-old.) The theme of possession so intense it takes sensory form, as Britney Spears demonstrated on “Perfume” can be serious emotional territory, but Carpenter is happy to be frivolous with it. It’s fun to be bad, and pop’s Julie Cooper is ready to do her worst.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Diminishing returns for her schtick continues — this is a sturdier song than “Please Please Please” but Carpenter’s charisma as a writer and interpreter has waned (the la-la-las behind “makes painting with his tongue” are dire.) She’s a star — there’s nothing here that doesn’t move through her — but heliocentrism does not guarantee success; hacky short jokes and come ons cannot be sustained as a model for pop excellence.
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Taylor Alatorre: Sabrina Carpenter has seen the Google metrics for “sabrina carpenter height,” among other less Jukebox-safe search terms, and begins her album by graciously giving her audience, actual and potential, just what they want. Yet she’s also adept at giving them what they don’t yet know they want, in this case a weather-beaten chunk of the side of late 1980s pop-rock that even Haim are sometimes afraid to touch. Syrupy melodies and “la-la”s are carried by production that’s audaciously lo-fi compared to other Main Pop Girl contenders, or indeed the rest of Short n’ Sweet — guitars that languish in late summer heat, a drum sound straight out of a sweltering practice space. Sebadoh Carpenter this is not, but the demo-like qualities lend an added sense of immediacy and closeness to a performer who knows when the time is right to make oneself seem small. Even when she steals Olivia Rodrigo’s flow on the bridge, it’s not out of ill will but rather the inherent comedy of copying from a song titled “deja vu.” She laughs at pop music jokes in her own music — that’s called meeting the consumer where they are.
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Edward Okulicz: If Katy Perry is fundamentally a nasty girl who occasionally plays sweet, Sabrina Carpenter is probably a sweet vacuum who does bitch cosplay. It doesn’t exactly suit her, but if the mask gives her the confidence to unleash a monster wave of pure smug contempt like this, then more power to her. Whether it’s the pilfered hooks or a few groan-worthy lyrics alongside the barbs that hit, I welcome a pop star who isn’t afraid to swing for the fences and make you like her at the risk of thinking she’s desperate. Here, she’s the audio equivalent of staring directly into the midday sun, in a good way.
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Dave Moore: This song is, annoyingly, perfect.
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Reader average: [8.5] (2 votes)