Santa Clarita, CA — A local man who heard Sabrina Carpenter’s hit single “Tears” for the first time this week has emerged from the experience with several questions, primarily centered on why a pop star of significant talent and renown has written an extended disco anthem about a man who does the dishes.
“I liked the music,” said the man, 34, who has been married for three years and asked to be identified only as someone who has assembled IKEA furniture on multiple occasions without being asked. “The production is great. She’s clearly very talented. I just didn’t fully understand what the achievement was.”
The song, which debuted at number one on Spotify’s global chart upon release and has since become one of the defining pop singles of 2025, details Carpenter’s physical and emotional response to a man who performs basic household tasks, communicates in a timely manner, and treats her with ordinary human respect — behaviors the song frames as so rare and arousing as to constitute a kind of magic.
The man, who has held a steady job since age 22, listened to the song three times in full.
“I do the dishes,” he said. “I do them tonight, actually, because it’s my turn. I’ve been doing my turn since my wife and I moved in together. We’ve been married three years. It has never once occurred to me that this required acknowledgment.” He paused. “Is this what the bar looks like?”
Carpenter, in a widely circulated interview, acknowledged the bar’s location directly, saying: “We’re definitely getting to a point where we’re just asking for the bare minimum, but, you know, acknowledging it.” The man found this clarification helpful and troubling in approximately equal measure.
“I assembled a chair from IKEA last month,” he continued, unprompted. “A Poäng. My wife picked it out. I did it without complaining and I got the little Allen wrench in the right slot on the first try. I didn’t make a thing of it. I just sat in the chair.” He looked at the middle distance. “Should I have made more of a thing of it?”
When asked whether he would describe himself as a responsible person who treats women with respect, he said yes, somewhat uncertainly, in the manner of a man who has just been informed that this qualifies as unusual.
The song is currently number four on the Billboard Hot 100. The man is doing fine.
Samuel Horwitz is a Santa Clarita native and the younger brother of SCVAPT contributor Jerome Horwitz, though he will remind you that he is technically the one in charge. His family traces their lineage all the way back to the 1960s, when his grandparents moved to the area to start a farm in what is now Castaic Lake. Growing turnips proved unfeasible below water, so they got out of farming and started a donut shop specializing in Bear Claws.
Samuel has been described by colleagues as “bossy” and “somehow always right about everything, which makes it worse.” In his spare time he enjoys local government meetings and a recurring physical comedy bit with Jerome that HR has been asked to look into.
Samuel holds no formal journalism credentials, which he considers a point of pride and shares with the rest of the SCVAPT masthead.
