I know we’ve more than moved on from the Olivia Rodrigo-Joshua Bassett-Sabrina Carpenter love triangle drama by now, but I’ve always been one to hold onto things longer than I should. I’ll be the first to admit that my loyalty to Livie influenced my choice to not listen to Carpenter’s new album, emails i can’t send, when it first came out in July. But I finally caved a few weeks ago, and what started as a reluctant anti-listen turned into me realizing I might have to call myself a Sabrina stan.
As it turns out, listening to her counter-narrative was much more entertaining than dissecting any lyrics that Bassett himself could ever write. The album is one bop after the other, but one lyric from the track “because i liked a boy” has been haunting me for weeks now. In the song, Carpenter quite candidly sings about Rodrigo’s “drivers license” and the fan backlash that ensued (being called a “homewrecker,” a “slut,” and describing the “death threats” she received). And in the bridge, she sings, “And all of this for what? / When everything went down we’d already broken up.”
I was so scandalized that I audibly gasped when I heard it. It might be a throwaway line for some, but for me, it breathes just enough life into all of the timeline speculations around the teeny-bopper affair that shook the world. And I’d be happy to keep mapping out its deeply dramatic timeline, so long as its participants keep supplying juicy lyrics. I’ve got my red string ready. —Rodlyn-mae Banting