Songfacts®:

• Here, Sabrina Carpenter recounts an encounter with an ex in a coffee shop. The arguments that sabotaged their relationship are long gone and they both notice how grown up they are now. He suggests a restaurant they used to go, while Sabrina daydreams of skinny dipping together in the water under the bridge.
  
  "It's kind of a multitude of things," Carpenter said of the song to Wired. "It's kind of this inner monologue, inner dialogue with yourself, but also coming to terms with your past and your present and being able to sit with the discomfort of things that have happened in life and not hold a grudge or hold any resentment, but just be able to skinny dip in water under the bridge. Be free."
• The meeting has re-ignited the flame the singer once held for the guy. Sabrina's fantasy of swimming nude with her former boyfriend makes this totally clear. Meanwhile, the use of the phrase, "water under the bridge," indicates she has disregarded the past events that turned their relationship sour and wants to start afresh.
  
  Sabrina said of the song, "One day we'll be older and see our past experiences with such fresh eyes that maybe the bad things won't feel so bad, and trust that life will lead us exactly where we're meant to be."
• When Sabrina first bumps into her ex, they engage in a "minute of nonsensical chatter."
  
  You'll say, "Hi", I'll say, "Hi, how are you?"
  You'll say, "How's your family? How's your sister?"
  
  The line refers to Sabrina's second-oldest sister, Shannon Carpenter, who is a dancer and choreographer.
• Sabrina wrote the song with Julia Michaels and JP Saxe. The two songwriters penned the duet "If the World Was Ending," where they reminisce over a past relationship, wondering if they would reconcile in the event of an apocalypse. Michaels and Saxe started darted shortly after finishing the song.
• Leroy "Big Taste" Clampitt produced the song. A producer and singer-songwriter from Pirongia, New Zealand, Big Taste's other credits include Justin Bieber's "Company" and Madison Beer's "Selfish."
• Big Taste played most of the instruments other than the horn (Noah Conrad) and strings (Yi-Mei Templeman). JP Saxe also did some additional guitar work.
• Sabrina Carpenter chose to lead her Emails I Can't Send album with "Skinny Dipping," despite it being one of the oddest tracks she has recorded.
  
  "The general public were like: 'This song is trash!' But I didn't want you guys to hear the same thing I'd been doing," she told The Guardian. "That song was really pivotal for me – I'm excited and ready to tell stories. And sometimes the only way you can do that is with a weird-ass structure and some run-on sentences."