News from Pharrell Williams and Camila Cabello: Rosé is over, it’s sangria season now. The duo’s new single “Sangria Wine,” a play on Jamaican wining and the fruit-filled beverage from the Iberian peninsula, is the first contender for song of summer 2018.
If that’s hyperbole it’s still a safe bet, considering Pharrell also had a hand in last year’s slinky, Frank Dukes-produced “Havana,” which became Cabello’s first number-one hit this January. But where “Havana” was a nostalgic and melancholy tale of feeling torn between two homes, “Sangria Wine” comes to have a great time: “Never left the city but she swears she’s a yardie,” the lyrics go, nodding again to Jamaica. Pharrell sings the word almost sarcastically, as if to acknowledge the trope: these two are just the latest U.S.-based pop stars to flirt with island slang. Cabello then introduces another language to the mix, alternating between English and Spanish and enticing her partner to the dance floor in both.
Consider too that summer is upon us, and wine is a perennial millennial obsession. Rihanna did it first, of course, walking out of restaurant after restaurant with glass in hand, but just this week we’ve witnessed the birth of a micro-fandom devoted to Kendall Jenner holding stemware by the bowl and an entire Twitter Moment about Dua Lipa‘s vineyard vacation. When Cabello began performing “Sangria Wine” live on tour last month, she was setting herself up for sidewalk café season. The real pun is in the choreography: a wine of the hips, a sip from an imaginary glass, an invocation to “float around like the fruit at the top.” Rarely does a new track seem so desperately in need of a music video.
The closest we’re getting for now is this Sunday’s Billboard Music Awards, where Pharrell and Cabello are set to give “Sangria Wine” its television debut. In the meantime there’s a visualizer clip (above) that animates the cute fruit magnets from the single artwork, and if you feel like you just spotted another trend: Here are almost certainly the same fruit magnets and a mini peach too.
