As Sabrina Carpenter continues to prove her “relatable queen” status despite looking like something out of Marty Mendleson’s doll collection (a highly specific Sex and the City reference), “Please Please Please” only serves to fortify that image. After all, what girl can’t relate to the fear of her current man endlessly embarrassing her? Chiefly by leaving her arbitrarily and in possibly the cruelest way possible (which is arbitrarily). The man who has undoubtedly inspired this song, Barry Keoghan, is also Carpenter’s co-star in the Who’s That Girl-meets-Bonnie and Clyde-inspired video. Talk about “self-aware.”
As for being fearful that Keoghan might “prove her right” by embarrassing her with an inevitably very public breakup (whether or not that means “forcing” her to break up with him because he’s so mortifying), she’s not wrong to be fearful. Seeing as how this is the same man that pulled an Ethan Slater by cozying up to Carpenter soon after splitting with Alyson Kierans, his sig other of three years (okay, so they weren’t married) with whom he recently had a child in 2022. The same year Keoghan was also arrested for public intoxication in Dublin. Indeed, it seems that Keoghan ramping up his partying ways (particularly after the awards season buzz surrounding The Banshees of Inisherin) was a large part of what contributed to the couple’s demise. His then ever-brightening star continued to rise after playing (“Big Dick”) Oliver Quick in the Single White Female-esque (with a dash of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Brideshead Revisited, to boot) Saltburn. It might very well have been that final scene that caught Carpenter’s attention after first meeting him in the, er, flesh at Paris Fashion Week in September of 2023, two months after Keoghan parted ways with Kierans. By December 2nd (Britney Spears’ birthday), the two were spotted on their first public date in Los Angeles. Because Keoghan, after all, has gone more Hollywood than any Irishman since Colin Farrell.
Carpenter’s awareness of her reputation for, let’s say, “picking the wrong men” (another Sex and the City reference) first began in 2021, with the release of Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license.” A song during which Carpenter is alluded to as “that blonde girl”—as in: “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.” But, to Rodrigo’s credit, she would give Carpenter plenty to be insecure about as well, prompting legions of Livies to “send death threats fillin’ up semi-trucks” (per “because i liked a boy”). However, even though Rodrigo seemed to have the upper hand on tarnishing Carpenter’s image for a minute there, Carpenter hit back at “drivers license” (though she claimed it wasn’t aimed at Rodrigo) with “Skin,” released just two weeks after the former.
At that time, Rodrigo herself was having a decidedly “Please Please Please” moment about Joshua Bassett. Her ego was crushed. Especially when, to add insult to injury, Bassett effectively “came out” in May of the same year by admitting he was attracted to Harry Styles (ever the queerbait). Hence, Rodrigo later referencing it on Guts’ “ballad of a homeschooled girl” with the lyrics, “Every guy I like is gay.” This in contrast to Billie Eilish saying, “I just kinda wish you were gay” (a more than somewhat ironic sentiment on her part now that her own sexuality has been revealed) on 2019’s “wish you were gay.” Another scenario in which the female singer in question expresses, above all else, a sense of wounded pride over being rejected by a “straight” man.
Something that Carpenter will come to understand all too well if Keoghan acts the way she thinks he’s going to based on “Please Please Please.” Which in and of itself is part of the song’s brilliance—Carpenter puts herself in on the joke, the speculation that the relationship is doomed to fail. Not just because Carpenter is technically his “rebound,” but because of his now indelible reputation as a “fuckboy” for essentially abandoning a family unit. And yes, that seems to be Carpenter’s type, at least aesthetically speaking. For her dating/“romantically linked” history is a sea of similarly-coiffed, “prettily rough-hewn” brown-haired boys “ranging” from Bradley Steven Perry to Griffin Gluck to Bassett to Dylan O’Brien to Shawn Mendes to David Dobrik.
Keoghan, obviously, marks her most high-profile romance yet, which is part of why the stakes feel so much greater. Great enough, apparently, to meta-ly sing about on “Please Please Please.” Granted, she already gave a nod to Keoghan, or rather, his ex on “Espresso” by flexing, “Too bad your ex don’t do it for ya/Walked in and dream came trued it for ya/Soft skin and I perfumed it for ya.” Alas, the attraction of “novel pheromones” can only last for so long—and Carpenter knows it. Thus, she sets herself up to win either way if things don’t work out with Keoghan. Because if they don’t, she already called it and if they do, well, all the better (or, in “Ari speak,” “God forbid somethin’ happens/Least this song is a smash”). Of course, most people are in the cynicism camp about the relationship’s potential to last. For it’s difficult enough for a “normal” couple to endure, let alone one dealing with the multi-faceted scrutiny of being a famous one.
As for Carpenter, she can admit that the worst part about it would be the blow to her ego (always especially large when one is a Taurus), vulnerably declaring, “Heartbreak is one thing, my ego’s another/I beg you, don’t embarrass me, motherfucker, oh/Please, please, please.” And yet, the more a person wants and/or openly begs for something, the less likely it is to happen. With regard to the Dolly Parton-esque lilt and theme of the track, Carpenter also conjures comparisons to Parton’s own decimated dignity when having to “beg” (that word again) Jolene not to take her man. In this situation, though, Carpenter is merely begging her man not to take himself away from her on a whim. Or, perhaps more appropriately (with regard to Keoghan’s Met Gala aesthetic), at the drop of a Wonka-like top hat.
And yes, in previous hit songs from female pop stars about conveying hurt over a breakup, it was usually portrayed from a perspective of sadness over the loss itself. Never hinting too much at the idea that ego was also highly involved. Which Carpenter further highlights by insisting that, if anything, he shouldn’t make her cry because she just did her makeup “so nice” (vanity indeed). Such narcissistic rhetoric didn’t even appear in something as “cheeky” as Lily Allen’s 2006 breakup anthem, “Smile” (which the aforementioned Olivia Rodrigo is obviously a fan of). Ultimately, there is nothing in the lyrics that alludes to her damaged ego as much as there are lines detailing her melancholy over the boy in question just randomly deciding to be done with her.
For example, “When you first left me/I didn’t know what to say/I’d never been on my own that way/Just sat by myself all day.” Later on in the song, the theme that shines through, if anything, is her vindication over the fact that her ex now wants her back. Realizes he’s made a huge mistake. What a boon to Allen’s ego (tantamount to Cardi B saying, “I like texts from my exes, when they want a second chance”). But now, she’s wise enough to see through him and his intentions, which, ultimately, are to stroke his own ego. Allen thusly sings, “Now you’re callin’ me up on the phone, so you can have a little whine and a moan/It’s only because you’re feelin’ alone” and “Whenever you see me/You say that you want me back/And I tell you it don’t mean jack/No, it don’t mean jack.” Then comes the crux of the “I’m vindicated” message in chorus form: “At first, when I see you cry/Yeah, it makes me smile/At worst, I feel bad for a while/But then I just smile/I go ahead and smile.”
It’s Allen’s accompanying video for “Smile” that drives home the underlying point of what’s really upset her about the breakup. For, in the beginning, it might appear, via her reminiscences of them in her bed together, that she misses the bloke himself, but as the Sophie Muller-directed video goes on, it becomes clear that, at the core of her “sadness” was the anger and embarrassment over being ditched by a fuckboy that she should have been able to ditch first.
In Carpenter’s situation, it remains to be seen if she’ll be carrying out a “Smile” operation by paying some thugs in the UK to beat up Keoghan or not when the time comes. Hopefully, instead, she’ll prove herself “right” in terms of deeming herself (albeit sardonically) to have “good judgment” and “good taste.” Whatever the case may be, like Ariana Grande before her with “thank u, next,” this is one relationship that has, at the very least, provided the masses with a timelessly resonant pop hit.
[…] […]