Review: Sabrina Carpenter – Short N’ Sweet

Sabrina Carpenter
Short n’ Sweet
Island Records
Street: 08.23
Sabrina Carpenter = The Corrs + Hannah Montana + Reneé Rap

If you crave relatable and unhinged authenticity wrapped in nostalgia, Sabrina Carpenter delivers an album that feels familiar, but not dated. It’s a witty pop confection that conjures the echoes of divas past—from promotional marketing evoking Donna Summer to sassy, sexual songwriting that feels like 2007 Hannah Montana penned by 2014 Miley Cyrus. 

Sonically and thematically, Carpenter’s bubbly melodrama feels like a remastered Radio Disney classic, yet it’s grown up enough now to find delectable lyrics like “hold me and explore me, I’m so fucking horny,” and “seems like overnight I’m just a bitch you hate now.” Dialing back the autotune and leaving enough space in the tracks to emphasize the instruments over its electronic production, Carpenter flexes versatility across her R&B, country, rock and disco inspirations, while the range of her repertoire obscures the lines between decades from the 1970s through the 2000s. 

Carpenter lets us know in the first line of her sixth album that she’s small but mighty, singing, “I leave quite an impression, five feet to be exact.” She seemingly clarifies the title is a reference to her petite stature, but her coyly encrypted double entendres often point to something more—like when she slyly reminded us the acronym for the British Broadcasting Corporation is also a Pornhub category, after the company previously attempted to sanitize her performance. The name “Short n’ Sweet” winks at us and perhaps pokes fun at the album’s 36-minute run time, her short-lived relationships with the famous men referenced in its tracks and maybe even their less-than-ideal endowment? (Although, anybody who remembers the closing scene of Saltburn knows she’s not calling her 5’8” Irish “Bed Chem” muse “short.”)

Carpenter has indeed left quite an impression, with a first-place debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart, bagging the title for “number one global Song of the Summer,” and sharing an internet-breaking kiss with Jenna Ortega in the “Taste” music video. She also makes the track her opener, punching in with the same dazed fervor of The Corrs “Breathless” and all the sparkle of Fleetwood Mac’s “Seven Wonders.” Capitalizing on her messy love triangle with Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, Carpenter spills tea for the girls and the gays who still remember when Cyrus and Selena Gomez beefed over a Jonas brother in a feud as iconic as Lindsey Lohan vs. Hillary Duff. The cycle continues. It’s easy to see this isn’t Carpenter’s first rodeo airing out her celebrity sloppy seconds, because she lands a lot more successfully on the “June Gloom” singer than her track “because i liked a boy” did with Olivia Rodrigo.

It doesn’t feel like pandering, though it’s definitely fan service for a generation of chronically online sapphic degenerates raised on Wattpad, who have been so starved for a crumb of queer representation in contemporary pop music that they’ve resorted to cult-like conspiracies, shipping the likes of  “Larry” and believing in “Gaylor.” Carpenter’s meteoric rise is often lumped into a summer cohort with Charli xcx and Chappell Roan—and while it might not be the only reason the triad is catapulting into the mainstream after years of performing and releasing music, I have to imagine their big lesbian music video bake-off with contenders like “Guess” and “Casual” certainly helps.

I’m ashamed to admit I was such a loser hater when “Espresso” was getting hyped. How original, a blonde popstar, singing nonsense lyrics that are only catchy because the production is kind of giving Doja Cat on “Say So.” Or so I thought. But when “Please Please Please” rolled around, I was like, fuck, she’s actually kind of hilarious. It probably does say something about the state of feminism that we’re all more worried about being embarrassed by the men we date than being abused or heartbroken by them. Pointing out these paradoxes is where Carpenter’s songwriting shines. Precisely identifying universal truths in short quips, she brilliantly satirizes them in the humorous way you have to when you’re moaning and bitchin’ to your friends—so they don’t feel like therapists. 

On the slow and stripped-back “Dumb and Poetic,” Carpenter doesn’t lean on pop clichés, but stands on par with other genre classics. It’s the best song to lament dating insufferable hipsters to since Katy Perry’s “Ur so Gay” in 2007. Crescendoing to drop the nuclear equivalent to Taylor Swift’s iconic line “And you would hide away and find your peace of mind / With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine,” she angrily commands: “Jack off to lyrics written by Leonard Cohen!” Honestly, a reasonable reaction to any of the dime-a-dozen men who truly believe psilocybin mushrooms made them develop empathy.

Short n’ Sweet is just fun, upbeat music you immediately grasp and return to again and again, because your besties won’t stop sending you lyrics where Carpenter is literally daydreaming about being ejaculated on to say “she’s so me” or “REAL.” Be forewarned: the brilliantly timed, haunting lyrics “cry because it’s over” in her closing track “Don’t Smile” are exactly what you will do. I certainly did, realizing I had reached the end of the snappy album far sooner than I had anticipated. –Arthur Diaz

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