A Brief Tour of Pop Music’s Caffeine Addiction

Dear listeners,

A couple of weeks in the past in our Friday function the Playlist, I really useful a bubbly new single by the pop artist Sabrina Carpenter and made a daring prediction: “Get prepared to listen to this one in all places.” Even extra shortly than I imagined, the prophecy has come true. Last week, “Espresso” debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Carpenter’s highest charting hit but. More necessary, it has taken over the nation’s psyche. You can hardly go wherever nowadays with out listening to somebody quoting the track’s infectious hook “That’s that me espresso” or questioning aloud, “what is a ‘me espresso?’”

That’s a profound philosophical query for one more day. Today, we’re merely honoring the absurdist pleasure of “Espresso” with a playlist of songs about caffeinated drinks.

Coffee has been a persistently evocative theme all through pop musical historical past, so this combine travels from 1940 proper as much as the current second. That trusty beverage is usually used to explain a classy form of romance (because it does on Otis Redding’s swooning ballad “Cigarettes and Coffee”) or maybe the idle hours ready round for stated romance to happen (see Peggy Lee’s sultry tackle the 1948 commonplace “Black Coffee”). Chappell Roan tries to make use of it as a protect in opposition to romance on a monitor from her 2023 album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” reasoning with a former flame, “I’ll meet you for coffee, ’trigger if we have now wine/You’ll say that you really want me, I do know that’s a lie.”

In “Espresso,” Carpenter makes use of the caffeine metaphor to counsel how stressed she makes a man she has wrapped round her finger: “Say you’ll be able to’t sleep? Baby, I do know.” Also, crucially, she understands that “espresso” rhymes with “I assume so.” That’s poetry.

It’s time for the percolator,

Lindsay

Listen alongside whilst you learn.

1. Sabrina Carpenter: “Espresso”

A breezy summer time bop with a splash of bizarro humor, “Espresso” is about to be blaring from each different beachside boombox. Carpenter’s gloriously unbothered vocal and the monitor’s disco-inflected sheen make the entire thing go down simple.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

2. Squeeze: “Black Coffee in Bed”

A memorable picture — “there’s a stain on my pocket book the place your coffee cup was” — kicks off this smoldering, six-minute basic about attempting to maneuver on from a relationship whereas concrete recollections linger throughout. (And sure, that’s Elvis Costello on backing vocals.) The British band Squeeze’s songwriter and guitarist Chris Difford revealed in a 2019 interview that an precise coffee ring impressed these opening strains: “Yeah,” he stated. “I nonetheless have the notepad in my workplace.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

3. Peggy Lee: “Black Coffee”

The nice Peggy Lee kicks off her 1956 debut album with a sublime studying of this track, written by Sonny Burke and Paul Francis Weber and first made well-known by Sarah Vaughan. That titular brew helps her keep awake as she waits up for an absent lover: “I stroll the ground and watch the door/And in between I drink/Black coffee.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

4. SZA: “Percolator”

This temporary however effervescent monitor from the deluxe version of SZA’s 2017 debut album, “Ctrl,” chronicles the singer’s insecurities and doubts earlier than declaring, “I wanna be a percolator.” I’m simply going to fake she’s speaking in regards to the coffee form.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

5. The Ink Spots: “Java Jive”

This 1940 single from the pioneering vocal group the Ink Spots is a enjoyable and slangy ode to a scorching cup of Joe. “Slip me a slug from the fantastic mug,” singer Deek Watson croons, “and I’ll minimize a rug until I’m comfortable in a jug.” And you thought “that’s that me espresso” was foolish!

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

6. Otis Redding: “Cigarettes and Coffee”

Companionship and good dialog make an atypical second glow — “simply speaking over cigarettes and coffee” — on this heat, crackling ballad from Otis Redding’s “The Soul Album.” “I don’t need no cream and sugar,” he sings, “’trigger I’ve acquired you now, darling.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

7. Chappell Roan: “Coffee”

This playlist started with one rising pop girlie, and it concludes with one other: the abruptly ubiquitous Chappell Roan. Over a sparse however theatrical piano association, Roan figures assembly an ex “just for coffee” is a greater guess than assembly for dinner or drinks: “Nowhere else is secure, each place leads again to your house.” By the top, although, she’s not even certain a fast, caffeinated date is innocuous sufficient: “’Cause if we did coffee, it’s by no means simply coffee.” Don’t even ask her about espresso.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

“A Brief Tour of Pop Music’s Caffeine Addiction” monitor checklist
Track 1: Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”
Track 2: Squeeze, “Black Coffee in Bed”
Track 3: Peggy Lee, “Black Coffee”
Track 4: SZA, “Percolator”
Track 5: The Ink Spots, “Java Jive”
Track 6: Otis Redding, “Cigarettes and Coffee”
Track 7: Chappell Roan, “Coffee”