“Skinny Dipping” by Sabrina Carpenter

The line which Sabrina Carpenter’s “Skinny Dipping” revolves around is the vocalist’s desire to “skinny dip in water under the bridge” with the addressee. That statement actually possesses two metaphors.  

Skinny dipping, as you likely know, is the act of swimming while nude. And Sabrina fantasizing about doing so with this person is indicative of the fact that this is a romantic relationship we’re dealing with here. 

Meanwhile the phrase “water under the bridge”, as utilized, is a popular metaphor in and of itself. And what it points to is the concept of forgetting past events which proved offensive, i.e. deading beef, which in this case would be the drama that caused the vocalist and addressee to break up. So explaining all of this more simply, the singer wants to get back with her ex.

But again, as it currently stands such is but a fantasy. What the majority of the lyrics are actually dedicated to is the songstress playing out in her mind how the two of them making up would go, i.e. the type of conversation they would have after apparently not communicating for an extended period. 

And as implied earlier, in this vision they basically proceed to forgive each other for all of the “arguments” and other ‘ways they sabotaged’ their relationship. So as for Sabrina at least, it is clear she has come to realize that she’s made some mistakes in this romance and at this point appears to be prepared to fess up to that fact. 

But as for her significant other, he never enters the narrative in a literal sense, and therefore it is never actually revealed how he currently feels about the matter.

Sabrina Carpenter and “Skinny Dipping”

Despite being only 22 years old as of the release of Skinny Dipping on 9 September 2021, Sabrina Carpenter has been in the game for a solid decade now. 

She made a name for herself earlier on as a Disney actress, most notably co-starring on a series entitled Girls Meet World throughout the mid-2010s, as well as being involved in music. Her debut LP under Hollywood Records (a subsidiary of Disney) was 2015’s Eyes Wide Open, and she has met notable musical success along the way. 

For instance, Sabrina’s second full-length, Evolution (2016), made it onto the top 30 of the Billboard 200. And in 2018 she came out with three consecutive singles that topped Billboard’s Dance Club Songs list, Alien (alongside Jonas Blue), Almost Love and Sue Me. 

However, truth be told, Carpenter reached a new level of general popularity earlier in 2021 as part of the Drivers License saga. The said saga centered on the reputed love triangle between she, Joshua Bassett and Olivia Rodrigo, the latter of whom, also a Disney actress, was the biggest breakthrough musical star of the year.

Accordingly if Skinny Dipping was released during the first half of 2021, we’d probably be compelled to speculate that the addressee is Joshua Bassett. However, he has more recently come out as gay. This has therefore more or less deaded the whole Rodrigo-Carpenter-Bassett rumors.

Skinny Dipping is a product of Island Records. And at its release, it is not formally associated with any album.

This song was produced and co-written by Big Taste, a musician from New Zealand. Sabrina is also credited as an author, as are fellow songstress Julia Michaels and JP Saxe.