Sabrina Carpenter had one of the biggest songs of 2024 with “Espresso.” That said, her label apparently had higher hopes for a different Short N’ Sweet track to be the album’s big breakout.
In a new Vogue cover story, it’s revealed that Island Records wanted “Please Please Please” to be the album’s lead single, but Carpenter went to bat for “Espresso.” She explained:
“There’s something about this song that, if I’d never heard it before, and I heard it live for the first time, I would understand it. I was definitely being swayed in another direction, but I knew deep down that it was this song. I was afraid of disappointing people for, like, five minutes. And then I was like: No.”
To give the label a bit of credit, favoring “Please Please Please” wasn’t an awful instinct: The song was the only Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single to come from Short N’ Sweet, but “Espresso” (which topped out at No. 3) was a bigger success overall (the two songs currently have 1.2 billion and 1.9 billion Spotify streams, respectively).
The piece also notes “Espresso” was the first song Carpenter wrote for the album, and she said of it, “I was writing all these sad songs, and ‘Espresso’ was like the one breath of fresh air. In the midst of all of it, I was like, This is still such a huge part of me — this mentality and the sense of humor and the playfulness.”
Read the full feature here.
