In perhaps the strangest celebrity crossover of the year, Dionne Warwick has said a Sabrina Carpenter lyric doesn’t quite ring true for her, despite being on everyone else’s lips for the better part of six months.
Warwick name-dropped Carpenter during a recent interview with NPR, in which the “Heartbreaker” singer was asked to rate songs by a range of younger musicians. Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”, Charli XCX’s “Guess” and Kendrick Lamar’s Drake diss track “Not Like Us” each appeared on the list for Warwick to rate, alongside Carpenter’s inescapable summer hit “Espresso”. You know, the record-breaking, Barry Keoghan-referencing track that’s had a chokehold on pop culture since April.
In case you’ve been under a rock, the buzziest lyric from “Espresso” comes in the second verse, when Carpenter delivers the earworm, “I’m workin’ late, ‘cuz I’m a singerrrr.” When asked whether that lyric felt true to her since she’s a singer herself, Warwick said “that does not resonate with me.” It was a cheeky moment not intended as a diss — since Warwick rated Carpenter’s song quite highly — but it saw her cop scrutiny over on X.
Pop Crave reshared Warwick’s reaction to the Carpenter lyric — one of multiple from Short ‘N Sweet that have been buzzing around our heads for weeks — and that prompted the singer to respond. “This was a joke,” Warwick clarified in a post on X, “but why would this resonate with me?”
“I do not work late. I go to sleep,” Warwick added, mustering the same energy as me when the third coffee starts to wear off. The singer went on to praise Carpenter as “a wonderful young vocalist doing her thing,” before “wish[ing] her nothing but success and longevity.” While that puts the nail in the coffin of a potential feud that would’ve torn me to pieces, it seems the real villain in this story is Pop Crave, at least according to Warwick.
“I love these young artists,” Warwick wrote in reply to the page, “Stop using me for clickbait and find something safe to do.” Get ‘em, Dionne!
Though Warwick might have avoided being embroiled in any Short ‘N Sweet drama, the same cannot be said for Camilla Cabello, whom fans believe is the subject of many songs on the album given her and Carpenter’s shared history with Shawn Mendes. I’d also be shattered if that heartthrob left me, to be fair.
Those two can fight all they like, but let’s all just let Warwick get the sleep she so thoroughly deserves. For her part, Carpenter actually is living true to that “Espresso” lyric, since she is currently hustling as part of her just-launched tour in support of Short ‘N Sweet.
On that same tour, she took credit for Eric Adams’ indictment, because the music video for “Feather” is reportedly what first turned authorities’ attention to the New York City mayor. Carpenter simply must keep busy like this, because after all, she’s workin’ late, cuz she’s a singerrrr.