On the heels of Olivia Rodrigo’s California-centric unrequited love anthem, “drivers license,” it seems more than a little suspect that Sabrina Carpenter (the presumed blonde mentioned in the aforementioned track) should decide to come out with “Skin.” Like Kesha with “Stronger,” she seems to be flagrantly ignoring that “Skin” is a title that belongs to Madonna. And since she appears to be so concerned with “possession” in this video, one would think she would know what was off limits, title-wise. For clearly, nothing is, boy-wise. It’s the nature of “The Boy Is Mine” game that women still find themselves hopelessly ensnared in with the shortage of hetero dick in this world. Not to say that Joshua Bassett is much of a beacon of that–but he’ll do.
And Carpenter very much wants Rodrigo to know, “Maybe we could’ve been friends/If I met you in another life/Maybe then we could pretend/There’s no gravity in the words we write/Maybe you didn’t mean it/Maybe blonde was the only rhyme/The only rhyme.” This can only be interpreted as a response to Rodrigo’s more generic shade toward both Bassett and Carpenter, “And you’re probably with that blonde girl/Who always made me doubt/She’s so much older than me/She’s everything I’m insecure about.” To really drive home the point that Rodrigo should feel insecure, she casts a Bassett avatar as her love interest in the video: none other than Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s Gavin Leatherwood (apparently carving out a rare sort of typecast for himself wherein he only dates girls named Sabrina).
Opening with a scene plucked straight from Hilary Duff’s own rain-soaked video for “Come Clean” (released as a single from 2003’s Metamorphosis in January of ‘04), we see Carpenter staring out the window as the rain pours down. The difference between her and Hil is that Carpenter is soon joined by an all too lascivious Leatherwood. Soon, they’re doing all sorts of hackneyed couple activities, like having a romantic dinner, laying side by side in bed together and dancing like they’re in a ballroom (as if–this ain’t Bridgerton).
Other lyrics seemingly aimed directly at Rodrigo include, “Want my heart to be breakin’, breakin’, no I’m happy and you hate it, hate it, oh/And I’m not asking you to let it go/But you been tellin’ your side/So I’ll be tellin’ mine, oh.” Apparently, such “clapbacks” are so tailored that many believe the entire “debacle” has been staged for publicity (not to mention the many elements from a season one Girl Meets World episode in which Carpenter’s classmate reads a poem called “The Girl With the Long, Blonde Hair”).
“You can’t get under my skin/If I don’t let you in,” Carpenter insists as an earthquake rocks her and her boo at the table and snow starts to fall over them in the bedroom. A scene of them languishing on the living room couch while Leatherwood reads is also sure to include a quick hold on a shot of a magazine on the coffee table called Bad4Business (hmmm–even though we all know stoking more drama is always good for it). Carpenter continues to engage in some humblebrags like, “You can try to get under my, under my, under my skin/While hе’s on mine” and “You’re putting me in the spotlight, but I’ve been under it all my life.”
Directed by Jason Lester (the most recognizable name he’s created other music videos for being Julia Michaels–and yes, he’s also the son of cult movie director Mark L. Lester), the “narrative” and aesthetic has a certain wannabe magical realism style in the spirit of Michel Gondry. Except that it’s a Sabrina Carpenter video and that feels like an almost insulting comparison to make.
After the snow in the bedroom, pouring rain then begins to fall down in the living room, as foreshadowed at the beginning of the video when she was staring out the window and ripping off fellow (ex-)Disney star Hilary D. Except, rather than seeming annoying, the rain comes across as just another way to make the relationship look “sexy” when, in fact, it exudes a basic as fuck vibe–and we kind of miss the days when women joined together to realize that the guy they were fighting over is actually a fuckboy (as evidenced in “The Boy Is Mine”). The calculated shade escalates when Carpenter opts to feature herself atop (à la Lorde in the “Green Light” video) a vintage Mercedes, the very car paraded in “drivers license”–plus it smacks of a Taylor Swift-inspired Easter egg (even if Tay Tay is a bit subtler in her jibes).
Still, Carpenter responded to the speculation about her Rodrigo smackdown with, “I wasn’t bothered by a few lines in a (magnificent) song and wrote a diss track about it. I was at a tipping point in my life for countless reasons. So I was inspired to do what I usually do to cope, write something that I wish I could have told myself in the past. People can only get to you if you give them the power to. And a lot of people were trying to get to me.” Sure, sure. But one person in particular.
In any case, the not so thinly veiled barbs at Rodrigo conclude with the final bridge of the song: “I just hope that one day/We both can laugh about it/When it’s not in our face/Won’t have to dance around it/Don’t drive [drive? driver’s license? get it?] yourself insane, it won’t always be this way.” She’s right. Soon enough there will be a brand new Disney-related love triangle for the next generation.
