On the latest episode of Song Exploder, Sabrina Carpenter chats with podcast host Hrishikesh Hirway all about her song “Please Please Please,” taking apart the track and piece by piece, telling the story of how it was made.
LISTEN NOW: Song Exploder — Sabrina Carpenter - "Please Please Please"
If you’re here then you most likely already know, but nevertheless, here’s a little bit about Sabrina. A singer, songwriter, and actress, who got her big break on the Disney Channel, Sabrina’s steady climb to the top has resulted in the pint-sized princess having the biggest year of her career. Gaining momentum with breakout tracks like “Nonsense” and “Feather,” Sabrina really popped off with her ultimate summer tracks “Espresso,” and “Please Please Please,” off her latest album Short n’ Sweet, which came out in August 2024, debuted at #1, and went platinum within a month.
Short n’ Sweet has garnered Carpenter a collection of nominations at the upcoming GRAMMYs for for Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Pop Solo Performance, and of course, Song Of the Year for “Please Please Please,” which she wrote with Amy Allen and producer Jack Antonoff.
Beginning by getting to the root of song’s lyrics, Sabrina said, “I think it was just such a specific thing that I was going through, just feeling as a young woman, one day you can be so confident and detached, and the next day, for lack of a better term, a desperate hoe. And it was something that was making us laugh, and I feel like this song was kind of the perfect way to just lay it all out on the table and also talk about something so openly that maybe we’re just normally afraid of saying. Which is like, sometimes you’re just embarrassed by men.”
Also there for the chat, Antonoff, recalled how he and Sabrina first met after one of his shows in 2021. “I had been aware of Sabrina and loved her work for a really long time, and then like two weeks later I went to this party and Sabrina was there.” It was at this party where they introduced themselves to one another, and well, we’ll keep it “short n’ sweet”, the rest is history.
On their very first day of working together, “as far as I remember,” Jack recalled, “‘Lie To Girls’ and ‘Please Please Please’ happened… and the beginning of ’Slim Pickins.’ Which is a pretty crazy studio day,” he added.
“I definitely went into those days with so many ideas,” Sabrina admitted of her days in the studio with Jack and her co-writer Amy. “But there’s something magical about just letting Jack start playing, and just starting to find you’re way their naturally. Like that initial idea came from those chorus chords.”
“I had the lyric ‘please please please’ before I ever knew what I wanted the song to be,” Sabrina expressed. “And then that week it so happened to be I was dealing with a specific scenario that I could — ‘oh isn’t this funny,’ this feels not only good to write about, but it felt really honest. And on top of it, the way we were able to make the song so playful, it really felt like electricity.”
Between Sabrina and Amy focused in on finding the right words, and Jack bopping around the studio making sounds, magic began to happen, and it started with a guitar riff. “Any great song that I’ve grown up loving has this iconic musical riff that you get so excited the second you hear, you’re like ‘oh my favorite song’s about to start,’” Sabrina expressed.
“Essentially you’re looking for that all the time,” Jack jumped in, “these things that are gonna put the song in its best outfit… A steady drum beat… the wobbly synths. I was like if I can just get it right, I know Sabrina and Amy are gonna go to the moon with it.”
“I got really excited with the way the lyrics sounded,” Jack added, “because I think Sabrina’s voice is incredibly modern and incredibly classic at the same time… Here’s Sabrina talking about something that’s right now, but then she’s also doing a run that's incredibly classic, but then we add a synth that feels incredibly shocking.”
“The women I grew up idolizing, even my mother, always had that — let me give it to them straight — mentality,” Sabrina said. “And I love when I can reflect that in something that can be sung so sweetly, and then can be blunt two seconds later.”
Also discussing how key changes, and melodic modulations were driven by the songs lyrics, Sabrina noted “we weren’t speaking so in-depth about the meaning behind all of these choices and why they worked in the moment. They just made us laugh, they made us scream, they made us dance around the room. And that is why we knew that it was what it needed to be.”
That being said, one thing they did put more thought into were the lyrics — “heart break is one thing / my ego’s another / I beg you don’t embarrass me motherf***er” — Which are words Sabrina literally said in a conversation earlier in the day, except for “motherf***er” which Carpenter recalled, “came out like an ad lib.”
Also delving into her natural instinct and methodical decisions when signing the song, Sabrina said many factors come into play. From “the way I would really say those things in real life, blended into the way I would sing them. To acting and performing the song, so I can be as expressive, and sarcastic, and my voice can hit notes that it would hit conversationally, just as much as I hit the notes that I’m meant to be singing.”
When asked to describe the song and what it’s about to someone who hasn’t heard it yet (so basically no one) Sabrina said, “it’s sort of a women kind of already knowing what she’s in for and just kind of saying it out loud so she can hold accountability for herself, at the end of the day. Like she already knows she’s gonna get into trouble so she might as well just own it. And I think that for me I feel that way any time I enter a relationship or any time I start falling for somebody. I know that love and pain always go hand in hand, so I think you’re kind of mentally preparing yourself.”
Sabrina continued, “because it’s only a matter of time before they do something stupid or they say something to piss you off, and that’s just the reality of relationships. This is a comical reoccurrence in my life and a lot of my friends lives, so I think its more about that honesty with yourself, allowing yourself not to take it too seriously, even though it might be actually hurting you.”
To listen to the entire conversation and hear everything else Sabrina and Jack had to say about the making of “Please Please Please” press play on the episode above.