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"Don't Leave Me Hangin' Like The Mona Lisa": The Backstory to Sabrina's Inspiration for "Mona Lisa"

Updated: Nov 29, 2021



"Mona Lisa" is a particularly notable song in Sabrina's discography, due to the now infamous complaint of fans that it's too short. This complaint in fact became so notable that Sabrina added it to her set list twice for the Singular Tour to acknowledge fans' criticism in a joking way. However, "Mona Lisa" has also always notable for another reason that I've never seen another Sabrina fan acknowledge: the song was created because of a line from Santana and Rob Thomas's "Smooth."


"You know what jumped out to me for this song? When he just name-dropped Mona Lisa." Sabrina explains, in a 2018 interview with Teen Vogue (you can watch the interview linked above, set to start right at the spot in the video she discusses this). "I was like, oh, I know who the Mona Lisa [is]! I was also, like, 12, being like 'I love art!'"


Sabrina goes on to elaborate: "As far as what I then took with me in songwriting is that you can almost find one little moment in a song that can be an entire song."


Clearly this moment in "Smooth" was so memorable to Sabrina that she wanted to "name drop Mona Lisa" in her own song, which I find quite inspiring. It's super cool that she used a part of a song that meant so much to her as a kid, and went on to turn that memorable moment into her own song. For that reason, this song will be always be very unique to me.

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