I Asked a Grammarian to Help Me Unpack “That’s That Me Espresso”

Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” is the definition of an earworm: the bouncy bop wriggles its way into your brain and never leaves. The nonsensical lyrics, which include puns like “I know I Mountain Dew it for ya,” are an undeniable part of its staying power: if all the edges were sanded off, if certain lines weren’t so jarringly off-kilter, I doubt it would inspire the same viral obsession. “I’m working late,” Carpenter sings, adding as though it were obvious, “because I’m a singer,” and while the listener tries to make sense of that supposition, it becomes unforgettable.

But one line above all has ascended into internet infamy over the last few weeks. I’m talking, of course, about “that’s that me espresso,” the much memed-about, totally ridiculous chorus-closing sentence.

Ever since I first heard “that’s that me espresso,” I have been obsessed with trying to decipher its meaning. My linguistics degree is almost 15 years old by this point but I thought I was still capable of unpacking some syntax. Then I called grammar expert Jeffrey Barg, who writes a column as “The Angry Grammarian,” and my mind melted. To understand why, we need to look at the line in its full context as it appears on most websites: “Say you can’t sleep, baby, I know / That’s that me espresso.” The narrator of the song is clearly addressing a man who is lusting after her so badly that he “can’t sleep.” That much we can agree on. But things get tricky from there.

My longtime personal theory has been that Carpenter is using “me espresso” as a purposely silly noun phrase, in which the pronoun “me” is repurposed as an adjective, as in, “You can’t sleep, and that’s because of a certain quality I possess called ‘me espresso.’” (This would not be totally unprecedented: my favorite spin instructor goes by the handle “Brittany Espresso,” and she’ll sometimes say things like, “Have another shot of Brittany espresso” in a motivational capacity during especially grueling climbs.)

Barg, however, hears something else in the presumptive song of the summer. “Grammatically, I interpreted it differently than you did,” he tells me, in one of the most important phone interviews I have ever conducted. The grammarian explains that, instead of Carpenter saying something akin to “That’s that thing about me” he interprets her as saying, “That’s that me” — “ and then, basically,” Barg continues, “I hear a comma implied after ‘me,’ and ‘espresso’ is just in apposition to ‘me.’”

What that means in layman’s terms is that “espresso” is being used as a term that could be substituted for “me” and the sentence would still make sense, in much the same way that I might type: “I’m Samantha Allen, a GLAAD Award-winning journalist who has chosen to use her time on a lyrical analysis of ‘Espresso.’” In this sample sentence, everything that comes after the comma is an appositive, a noun phrase that describes the one next to it, known as its antecedent.

As Barg hears the chorus, “me” is the antecedent, and “espresso” is its appositive, as in “It’s-a me, Mario.” Under that interpretation, Carpenter isn’t claiming that some elixir known as “me espresso” is keeping her “honeybee” up at night, she’s saying that “me,” a person who could be known or described as “espresso,” is preventing the hapless horndog from getting any sleep. It’s a subtle but important distinction, and one that blows the case wide open.

“Sorry, did I just rock your world?” Barg says, like a total badass, when I fall silent, enjoying a rare mic-drop moment for a grammarian. “Logically, I think that makes sense,” he continues, laying out his case. “Say you can’t sleep, baby I know, because I am the espresso that’s keeping you up’ — that makes sense to me.”

It might make sense, but is it true? Without access to official liner notes, it’s hard to say whether there is in fact a comma in “that’s that me (,) espresso.” Online sources vary widely. The song annotation website Genius has no comma, putting a point in my column. Maddeningly, Today.com uses the comma and comma-less variant in the same article! But plenty of media outlets do solely use the comma version. Memes like “don’t talk to me until I’ve had my me espresso,” however, seem to suggest a certain colloquial understanding of “me espresso” as a noun phrase.

The closest thing we have to the word of God is the line as it is written on YouTube and music streaming sites, posted by official Sabrina Carpenter accounts. But even those sources cause confusion. Apple Music, for instance, writes it without the comma as “That’s that me espresso” but the YouTube caption styles it differently, with a line break: “That’s that me / Espresso,” which suggests the implied pause Barg heard. The fact that the word is capitalized, after a press of the return key, is certainly strong evidence in his favor. I sent an urgent request for comment to Universal Music Publishing Group asking for clarification, but did not hear back by press time. In the meantime, I’m clinging to the fact that Carpenter’s website has a slogan-bearing crop top available for preorder without the comma.

Opinions at Them, where some staffers have been infected by “Espresso” fever, remain divided. “To me, it’s like an adjective: the espresso of me,” our Carpenter-pilled art director Wesley Johnson tells me, adding credence to my perspective. But another colleague, whose identity I am protecting because they “f**king hate this song,” agrees with Barg: espresso is an appositive. (A third co-worker writes, “I need to spend more time reading the lyrics and also googling the word ‘appositive,’” to which I can only say I’m sorry for introducing you to this rabbit hole.)

To complement *The Tortured Poets Department*, we assembled our own LGBTQ\+ playlist.

Whatever the answer, Barg points out that all the puns, oddities, and malapropisms in the song work in its favor. “That’s that” isn’t technically a grammatical sin, but it’s not the most natural-sounding sequence of words to use in the hookiest part of your chorus. “Repeating lyrics is a super common way to make songs catchier, to make them more memorable, and the examples of that are endless,” Barg says, and he knows of what he speaks, having written an entire musical about grammar that will be staged again this fall.

“Playing with parts of speech is a really great way to make things sticky, to make listeners sit up and notice,” he says. “The trick to making something super catchy is to play with a part of speech so that it is ‘wrong’ but still understandable.” (For instance, Alicia Keys’ description of New York City as a “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” in Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” still haunts listeners all these years later.)

Barg’s official review of “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter? “Grammatically, overall, I kind of liked it,” he says. “It plays with language in some nice ways.” But while he might be able to walk away unscathed and mildly amused by the track, I feel deeply broken. As I type this article — easily crossing the thousand-word mark, which is worrying given the subject matter — it is one o’clock in the morning and I have become the sleepless subject about whom Carpenter sings. What is keeping me awake right now? Is it the espresso-like quality of her zany chorus? Or is she herself the espresso that has made my eyes bloodshot and weary? Sabrina, if you’re reading this, please help. I have to know the answer. You really Mountain Did it to me this time.

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Originally Appeared on them.