Sabrina Carpenter’s reign over the summer of 2024 continued this weekend at the Governors Ball music festival in New York City, where the famously 4’11” pop star made a big Pride statement.
Fans of the “Espresso” singer know she’s fond of changing up the so-called “Nonsense” outro after performing the track “Nonsense.” Essentially, on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and beyond, Carpenter comes up with raunchy rhyming couplets tailored to the venue, whether she’s making a sex pun about going “down under” in Sydney or joking about someone being “30 Rock-hard” on SNL. But during her Governors Ball on June 9, she made her nonsense outro do double duty, pulling off a salacious joke while also calling out anti-LGBTQ+ bigots.
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As “Nonsense” ended, she sang: “Do I text him back? It’s such a tough call / That won’t fit inside me, bro, I’m dumb small / People who hate Pride can suck my Gov Balls.” And then, over the roar of the crowd, she shouted, “Happy Pride, New York! I love you so much.” Judging from the kind of airtime “Espresso” is getting at every LGBTQ+ function for the past month, it seems like the feeling is mutual.
Carpenter’s pro-Pride nonsense outro was just the tip of the very gay iceberg that was this year’s Gov Ball. In her own playful pro-Pride message, recent Them cover star Reneé Rapp said, “We’re so visible it’s sickening. We’re viz, we’re viz, we’re 4K.” Chappell Roan did the “Hot to Go” dance dressed as the Statue of Liberty while issuing a powerful call for “freedom for all.” And G Flip performed their viral, gender-swapped cover of “Cruel Summer,” among many other queer Governors Ball moments.
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Meanwhile, the pocket-sized Carpenter is continuing to cement her place in 2020s pop lore. Days before her Gov Ball set, she released the music video for “Please Please Please,” which stars her own boyfriend, Saltburn star Barry Keoghan, as a sexy mafioso in trouble with the law. The song also added yet another earworm to our cultural lexicon: “I’m working late, ’cause I’m a singer” is now rivaled by Carpenter’s breathy, contralto pronunciation of “motherf**ker” in the new track.
Supporting her queer fans on top of all that? That’s just that her espresso.
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