★★★★☆
Coming off a year in which she opened for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and broke into the national pop scene with her hit song “Nonsense,” it was only natural for fans to wonder if Sabrina Carpenter could continue to build on her momentum.
With her sixth studio album, Short n’ Sweet, Carpenter has not only built on that momentum but also cemented herself in the pop scene with a unique mix of clever and catchy lyrics. It all makes for a listening experience best described as just plain fun.
In stark contrast to Carpenter’s 2022 album emails i can’t send, a deeply raw and honest project dealing with themes of heartbreak and infidelity, Short n’ Sweet explores these same themes with deadpan humor and dance-pop instrumentation.
Carpenter opens the album with a cheeky, backhanded song titled “Taste” directed at her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.
“You’re wondering why half his clothes went missing / My body’s where they’re at,” Carpenter sings.
The song is rumored to be directed at Camila Cabello, who dated Shawn Mendes from 2019–21 and then reportedly got back together with him for a brief period in 2023 after Mendes and Carpenter had broken up.
On the song’s bridge, however, Carpenter assures us that singing about it doesn’t mean she cares about Cabello and Mendes’ relationship, but that she sings because she’s “been known to share.” The line is a humorous reference to another famous love triangle involving Joshua Bassett and Olivia Rodrigo, where the pair of female pop singers traded jabs at each other on the songs “drivers license” and “Skin.”
Moving from the past to the present, Carpenter sings about a new lover on one of two lead singles for the album: “Please Please Please.”
“Heartbreak is one thing, my ego’s another / I beg you, don’t embarrass me, motherf—-r,” Carpenter sings.
Keeping with the theme of the last track, “Good Graces” provides some advice to her new boyfriend to keep her around. The track is packed with intoxicating vocals and an ’80s-style R&B-adjacent instrumentation and vibe.
While sonically the track is fun and catchy, the lyrics themselves somewhat fall apart upon close examination as Carpenter paints herself as a toxic lover who threatens her boyfriend by saying she “knows lots of guys” and will leave him if he does something “suspect.”
Over the course of the next two songs, Carpenter describes a boyfriend who “made sure that the phone was face-down” on “Sharpest Tool” and whose “car drove itself from L.A. to [his ex’s] thighs” on “Coincidence”.
While in the past Carpenter may have approached these themes with a piano ballad and whispery vocals, she instead uses clever jabs and upbeat drum lines to keep with the lighthearted tone of the album.
Closing out the first half of the album is “Bed Chem,” a sexually explicit song rumored to be about her current boyfriend Barry Keoghan. Seemingly pulling inspiration from Ariana Grande, the song sounds like it would fit right in on Grande’s 2020 album Positions.
Carpenter puts her own unique spin on the style, however, with her out-of-left-field lyricism that has since gone viral on TikTok.
“Come right on me, I mean camaraderie / Said you’re not in my time zone, but you wanna be / Where art thou / Why not uponeth me,” she sings.
The second half of the album appears, at least initially, to build upon Carpenter’s lyrical wit and lighthearted handling of her love life. “Espresso” quickly became a defining song of the summer when it was released as a single in April 2024. If you had internet access this year, you probably had the song’s riff stuck on a loop in your head.
“I’m working late / ’Cause I’m a singer,” Carpenter sings.
With the exception of “Juno,” a glittery pop counterpart to the sexual energy of “Bed Chem,” the album’s final songs take a sharp left turn from “Espresso.”
While it’s easy to pinpoint which potential ex-lovers Carpenter’s previous songs are about, the last few tracks of Short n’ Sweet are melancholic and mysterious.
“Dumb & Poetic” is full of the lyrical quips found in the first half of the album, but its sweeping acoustic sound and stripped vocals lend a bittersweet feeling to the track. “Lie To Girls” is both an anecdote about a man’s red flags and a vulnerable cry for help, with a sound to match “Dumb & Poetic.”
“I’ve never seen an ugly truth that I can’t bend / To something that looks better / I’m stupid but I’m clever / Yeah I can make a shit show / Look a whole lot like forever,” Carpenter sings on “Lie To Girls.”
Carpenter also swerves into a potential attempt at country on this album with the twang-infused “Slim Pickins.” Whether you think the track deserves a real country artist’s touch or not, its lyrics definitely have a twisted Southern charm to them.
“I guess it’s you that I’ll be kissin’ / Just to get my fixins / Since the good ones are deceased or taken / I’ll just keep on moaning and b—-in’,” she sings.
With a runtime of just 36 minutes, Short n’ Sweet lives up to its name. As the last track, “Don’t Smile,” notes, there’s a lot more than sweetness infused into this album. A smooth piano riff and lo-fi beat play in the song as Carpenter expresses her desire to be missed by listeners and lovers alike, suggesting they “don’t smile because it happened baby / Cry because it’s over.”
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