Last year, irrelevant as it is to most people, saw the top of the UK singles chart, in a world where there are hardly any singles anymore, dominated by women. Yep, 32 of the 52 weeks saw females at number one and 20 of those were by one woman, Sabrina Carpenter. Her nine-week reign with Taste has been requested this week by Aimee Graham. So, what is that song all about?
Sabrina Annlynn Carpenter was born in Quakertown, Pennsylvania on 11th May 1999. When she was 10, she began posting videos of herself covering Adele and Christina Aguilera songs and eventually got her break when she starred in the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World in 2014. She already had a connection to the acting profession as well as a UK number one because her aunt is Nancy Cartwright who is the long-time voice of Bart and Maggie Simpson in The Simpsons and sang on the 1991 chart-topper, Do the Bartman.
Taste is a song about relationships of which Sabrina seems to have had a few and not all have gone well. In short, that’s where the album, her sixth no less, got its title. Short n’ Sweet could have many connotations but it’s actually a glance at some of the relationships that have been short-lived but meaningful to her. In a candid interview with Paper, she said, “I will write any song. It doesn’t mean I’ll put it out, but I’ll write it. I think the series of unfortunate events I’ve encountered in relationships are no secret to people who know me, or think they know me.”
The song has five writing credits; Sabrina Carpenter, John Ryan, Julia Michaels, Amy Allen, Ian Kirkpatrick all of whom have written hits for the likes of Selena Gomez, One Direction and Dua Lipa. In this song it’s more about an ex-boyfriend and the impact she had on him as revealed in the opening line, ‘Oh, I leave quite an impression’ she is saying, hypothetically, to his new love, that, ‘You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you’. In the third verse, she reiterates to her the force she had by telling her, ‘He pins you down on the carpet, makes paintings with his tongue, he’s funny, now all his jokes hit different, guess who he learned that from?’
Like Taylor Swift, Carpenter has had full artists control over this album and is full of fun and witty innuendos, “This feels like my second ‘big girl’ album,” she commented. The most amusing party is the line before the bridge where she enforces the point that is no longer interested in his ex by singing, ‘feels his lips, you’re feelin’ mine, you can have him if you like.”
Carpenters impact in 2024 is just the start, she knows how to sell a song and what appeals right down to the 80s disco feel of the track knowing that 80s songs never fail at a good party. It’s also accompanied by a hot video in which she shares a steamy kiss with Jenna Ortega, the pretty lady who starred as Harley Diaz in the Disney Channel series Stuck in the Middle. In just three hours of the video dropping on YouTube, it was viewed more than 1.5 million times. What the viewer probably wasn’t expecting was halfway through, as soon as the kiss breaks, Jenna plunges a chainsaw into Carpenters midsection and blood spurting all over the place. This video looks like it could be made by the direction of A Nightmare on Elm Street. There is a shot when both girls are in hospital and after Carpenter has part of a fence removed, she ends up with a hole right through her body, this scene was said to be inspired by the 1992 part-comedy film Death Becomes Her starring Meryl Streep.
There were rumours abound that the song was about Shawn Mendes whom Carpenter has been romantically linked, but Taste was released just after she’d broken up with Saltburn actor, Barry Keoghan. At the Grammy’s in 2024, she confirmed they were an item but she apparently dumped him just before releasing Taste because she couldn’t cope with his party antics when he’d had too much to drink. We can keep guessing who it’s really about, but when you get fed up, just turn to the video for a nice distraction, but be careful.