‘Short n’ Sweet’ Is An Album So Sweet, Smart, And Savvy It Should Come With A Warning

Long gone is her Disney Channel fame. In her sixth release, Sabrina Carpenter has marked herself as one of pop’s finest with ‘Short n’ Sweet’, an album marked with honesty, self-depreciation, searing wit, and spoonfuls of sweetness. 

Exploring the highs and lows of dating in the modern world, from obsession and lust to cheating and resentment, while short (both Carpenter’s 5-foot height and 12-track length) the album covers every emotion in excruciatingly humorous detail and instrumental lightness. Weaving through genres, from pop rock, country, disco, funk, and a smattering of 90's R’n’B, Carpenter never strays from her identity. It’s honest, it’s raunchy, it’s an earworm of an album from start to finish. More than that, it shows that Sabrina Carpenter is much more than the fame she has accumulated from her disco-fuelled number one ‘Espresso’.

Starting from the top, Carpenter certainly leaves an impression with the first track ‘Taste’. From the outset, the singer's vocals give you goosebumps, flipping and fluttering; it’s a beautiful delivery accompanied by low-strung chords that cut through the melody. It’s the anthem for the recently broken-up, and when paired with the music video, perfect sting in the sweetness. 

Featuring Jenna Ortega, the new face of horror, thanks to her work with Tim Burton, the video is the perfect homage to horror movie classics, featuring recollections of movies such as the female-duo-centric Death Becomes Her, knife-wielding Psycho, the piercing comedy gags of Ginger Snaps, all the way to costuming inspired by Addams Family Values and Kill Bill Vol 1. From the catchy melody to the iconic video accompaniment, ‘Taste’ is a searing track, and the perfect way to start an album. 

This isn’t the only track where Carpenter draws inspiration from modern film. The singer returns to early 00’s influence in the track ‘Juno’, a track filled with attraction and the lust-filled thoughts that follow. Discussions online are split as to whether the song is referencing the romantic comedy, Juno, which follows a teen pregnancy, or the goddess Juno, a symbol of fertility and childbirth. No matter which you believe, you cannot escape the track’s obsession with this unnamed figure, and the desires that stem from it are excruciatingly apparent. It’s romantic and blinded by lust with all the instrumental components of a pop classic. 

This leads into ‘Please, Please, Please’, a song on everyone’s lips this summer. Packed with catchy pop beats, the track highlights the strength of Carpenter’s collaboration with Jack Antonoff. The 80s inspired riff that opens the track and the lightness of the production and the synth overtones work together in harmony to highlight the wit and gentleness of the singer’s vocals. Pair this with the foreboding warnings to embarrassing lovers that hide under the playfulness of the lyrics, it’s no wonder the track reached number one status and had us all screaming “I beg you don’t embarrass me / mother ******”. 

Another track that shows the strength of this musical collaboration is ‘Coincidence’, which pairs Antanoff’s instantly recognisable sound with Carpenter’s angelic vocal capabilities and searing sarcasm into a hit. From the beautiful harmonies to the beauty of the high notes, its folksy sound is sliced by the humour of the track’s topic. 

One strength that can’t be avoided throughout the album’s thirty-six-minute runtime is how quotable couplets appear in nearly every track. From the punchiness of “What a surprise, your phone just died / Your car drove itself from LA to her thighs’” to the ingenious couplet in ‘Bed Chem’ that includes the smartest (and most blush-inducing) ways to include camaraderie into a song that has ever been seen, it’s not only tongue-in-cheek, but searingly smart, too. 

From the punchy pop of the album and R’n’B energy of tracks like ‘Good Graces’, there is a lightness to the album. This is seen in the acoustic ballad ‘Lie to Girls’, which is drenched with heaviness and bitterness that Carpenter manages to deliver so dreamily. Or in ‘Dumb & Poetic’, which recollects ‘Cindy Lou Who’ in the way it drops the upbeat sound for savvy lyricism. Carpenter so accurately depicts the kind of figures that have likely to have graced many of our dating experiences at one time or another. It creates a space for us all to laugh at experiences that at one time or another stung us, her honesty creating a collective space for dating blunders. 

Not only do we see this lightness vocally but also instrumentally, in the finger-picking guitars of ‘Sharpest Tool’ and country-infused ‘Slim Pickins’, as Carpenter scours the market to find the one. The album has the perfect balance between anthemic songs drenched in empowerment, and tracks packed with wittiness and sarcasm to hide the resentment and cynicism. 

No matter your musical taste, ‘Short n’ Sweet’ stands out from anything currently available musically, melding wit and experience with vocal highlights and perfect musical accompaniment. It’s a grown-up album that sees Carpenter depart from her previous sound, bringing something smart and all-together brilliant. But seriously, it should probably come with a warning for some of the lyrics. 

 

Megan-Louise Burnham

@mgn.lb

Image: ‘Short n’ Sweet’ Official Album Cover