It always did have a bit of Dolly Parton-esque bounce, and now Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 single Please Please Please has been blessed by an appearance by the lady herself. Yes, a new duet version has been released; it’s included on the Deluxe version of Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet album, which has also dropped.
Captioning a still of her new Parton-featuring video on Instagram, Carpenter wrote: “Dolly and me singing in a pickup truck!!!!!! I am so honoured to have one of my biggest idols on a song that means so much to me. Short n’ Sweet deluxe is out now! Go watch and listen!!!!”
Please Please Please was co-written and produced by Jack Antonoff, who previously explained the song’s unusual key change in the second verse.
“We were messing with different keys and then we heard the second verse jump up,” he told Mix with the Masters. “It sounds like she’s [Carpenter] having this idea in real-time. And it’s A to C - it’s not a typical place you would lift to - and we were just all like ‘whoa’.
“It’s almost like the second verse is a dream,” adds Antonoff, “and then we go back to the reality of begging someone ‘please, please, please.’”
One notable change in the new version is the removal of the swears in the chorus, with ‘motherfucker’ changed to the radio-friendly ‘like the others’, possibly to save Dolly any embarrassment. There’s more of a ‘train beat’ groove as well, and Parton’s vocals are as distinctive as ever.
The duet is one of five new songs on Short n’ Sweet (Deluxe), the others being 15 Minutes, Couldn’t Make It Any Harder, Busy Woman and Bad Reviews.
