daffy

Sometimes it’s a daffy, hard-to-parse turn of phrase like “That’s that me espresso”; sometimes it’s an unexpected burst of profanity like the “motherf—” Carpenter drops in “Please Please Please.”

If you want a taste of his magic, here he is opposite Jane Krakowski in the 2016 Broadway revival of “She Loves Me,” making the love-drunk number “Ilona” live again in all its daffy, bawdy, crooning euphoria.

The success of sparkly bops like Carpenter’s “Espresso” and Roan’s “Hot to Go!” proves that listeners are hungry for what Perry used to serve up, albeit now on the condition that it contain the kind of endearing quirk — Carpenter’s daffy neologisms in “Espresso,” for instance — that Perry seems paradoxically to have avoided in her eagerness to please.

Behind Lamar in the race are Sabrina Carpenter with the daffy “Espresso,” Tommy Richman and his viral “Million Dollar Baby” and Post Malone with not one but two superstar duet partners: Taylor Swift in “Fortnight” and Morgan Wallen in “I Had Some Help.”

She is an uber-dork with a fondness for spreadsheets, and Kurtz’s Cassandra is a daffy delight that recalls Annaleigh Ashford’s performance in “Kinky Boots.”