Elia Sevilla Sequeira
Sabrina Carpenter is a silly, ‘horny’ girl who sometimes makes mistakes, or that is
what she tells us in her latest album Short ‘n Sweet. After a 15-year career, the 25-
year-old singer is finally getting the success she has been looking for. Like many
former child stars, her early music was childish and generic, it was not until her fifth
album Emails I Can’t Send that Sabrina found her style and space in pop music,
with honest and raw lyrics keeping touching topics like the internet hate she suffered
and her father’s affair.
The singer-actress started her career in a Disney show, Girl Meets World, and has since released six albums, but never reached pop stardom. It was in 2023 when buzz online surrounded her name, a combination of her life performances and the fact that she was Taylor Swift opening act of the Eras Tour.
After a summer succes with Espresso and her first number one in the Billboard chart,
the expectations for her sixth album are higher than ever, and she delivered.
In the middle of a self-importance album pandemic, where everything needs to have a
deeper meaning, Sabrina provides something sweet and short, an escape where she
is unapologetically herself. Sometimes she is heartbroken, she is vengeful and other
times she is in love and silly. But she is always having a good time.
The album starts with Taste, a song about how she ligers on her past lovers, the
song is fun and witty, making fun of herself: “I leave quite and impression, five feet to
be exact” and others: “Every time you close your eyes, And feel his lips, you’re
feelin’ mine”.
Compared to the opening track on her previous album, Emails I Can’t
Send, a heartbreaking song about her father cheating on her mother, Taste lacks
depth. But that is the point, she making clear that Short ‘n Sweet is exactly that,
short with only 36 minutes of duration and sweet with the themes, lyrics, and vocals.
Across the 12 tracks Sabrina and her producers and co-writters, giants of the
industry like Julia Michales and Jack Antonoff, play with different genres and sounds
that are well known. Some sparky pop tunes in Please Please Please and Taste.
Good Grace is closer to a 90’s R&B.
And a pleasant surprise came with Slim Pickins and Sharpest Tool, the two songs have a country feel to them. Because of the multiple genres in the album production feels messy at times. If this was her first
album the experimentation would be a nice touch but since this is her sixth studio
album cohesiveness is needed. Nonetheless, she is saved by her amazing vocals
and clever lyrics.
If the length of the tracks puts the short in Short ‘n Sweet, Sabrina’s voice puts the
sweetness. With amazing vocals in Good Graces or the layering in Please Please
Please she proves that she can sing anything. Adding emotion in Lie To Girls and
Dumb and Poetic, the ballads of the album, or the sounding cheeky and sassy in
Juno and Sharpest Tool. But everything is sung with such sweetness that feels
almost fake, she is laughing at herself and the persona she has created.
If there is something that feels like Sabrina Carpenter is the lyrics. You can tell from
the first listen that she was deeply involved in the writing of this album. Carpenter’s
personality as we have often seen in interviews and her live shows is silly, fun, and
sarcastic. And that’s exactly what her songs are like. Talking about the dating scene
with memorable phrases like “This boy doesn’t even know The difference between
«there,» «their» and «they are»” in Slim Pickins. Or about feeling sexy with lyrics like
“Come right on me, I mean camaraderie” in Bed Chem or the more obvious ones in
Juno “I’m so fucking horny”.
Sabrina Carpenter leaves behind the sad moody pop music that has been trending and steps right into the world of being a fun popstar. The highlight of the album are two completely different songs that give a sense of who Sabrina Carpenter is, even if that was not her goal. Coincidence is an almost
folk-pop song that talks about somebody cheating on you, instead of feeling sorry for
herself Sabrina makes fun of the situation, which perfectly encapsulates the vibe of
the album. It has some writing that makes you gasp and laugh out loud on the first
listen. The acoustic guitar and the claps setting the pace were a nice addition and
one of the reasons the song stands out.
And of course Lie To Girls, a song that will probably go under the radar of casual
listeners but has one of the best outros produced in a while, with the layering ecos
that build up along with the drums. If only this was the final track of the album.
Ending the album with these lyrics: “Girls will lose their goddamn minds for you /
They’ll cry and girls will lie and / Do it ‘til the day they die for you” would have been
sublime. Is a rare but needed moment of honesty in the album, where Sabrina shows
that the things she was been singing about actually matter to her and that her “give a
fucks” are actually not on vacation.
