Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Short n’ Sweet’ is the culmination of years of hard work

I feel like I should hate ‘Espresso’ by now. Though only released in April, the lead single for Sabrina Carpenter’s album Short n’ Sweet immediately reached the success that has rendered it ubiquitous- a ubiquity that would render most songs irritating and make you groan every time you hear it. Yet this hasn’t happened with ‘Espresso.’ Somehow Carpenter has made it so that no matter how many times you hear “that’s that me espresso,” the harmonies that accompany every witty remark, or the breezy twinkle of the synths throughout the track you don’t tire of it. However, as the album release grew near there was the slight worry that Short n’ Sweet would be a whole album trying to replicate the caffeinated magic of its biggest single. Thankfully, this is not the case as Carpenter is able to articulate the complexities of love and romance in your early twenties without falling into cliché or imitation of other artists.

The album feels like the statement of someone who has put years of work into their craft

Of course, with Carpenter being a product of the Disney channel star to successful musician pipeline (emphasised by the fact that Short n’ Sweet is her sixth studio album) this feels almost expected and is bolstered even more by the fact that she has production from industry titans like Jack Antonoff, Julia Micheals, and Julian Bunetta. The album feels like the statement of someone who has put years of work into their craft and is now able to emerge as a fully formed pop star with intricate imagery weaving throughout her lyrics and slick, well-oiled production keeping the album driving forward. The flow between the first two tracks ‘Taste’, a tongue-in-cheek song addressed to the new partner of someone who is still interested in Carpenter bolstered by a glimmering guitar and drum beat, and ‘Please, Please, Please’, a synth-heavy plea for someone to not live up to the bad expectations of them, is impressively smooth and a real indicator of the quality of the album as an overall experience and not simply as a collection of songs.

The same level of quality is applied to the crafting of these small, precise vignettes throughout the songs. ‘Dumb and Poetic’ as a track is full of all these perfect details to help craft the image of dating a pseudointellectual person that is actually intensely hollow as he recites lines from self-help books and does mushrooms in a bid to seem to smarter than he is. There is also the line “jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen” at the end of the first verse which presents such a crystallised image of this guy desperately trying to seem more intelligent than he is that it automatically makes the track one of the best on the whole album. There are also similar sharp writing decisions made on ‘Slim Pickins’. This country fused song pokes at the exhaustion of trying to find love when the person you actually want is not available and “the lord forgot my gay awakening,” leaving you stuck in flings with people who don’t “even know the difference between their, there, and they are.”

Short n’ Sweet is not a completely perfect album

But for every meditative vignette of heartbreak there is a ‘Juno,’ a song which details the beginning stages of a lustful relationship with reference to “fuzzy pink handcuffs” and jokes that “I might let you make me Juno” in reference to the 2007 film of the same name. It’s also a song that, along with a decent chunk of tracks on the album, will lead a considerable amount of listeners to speculate who certain tracks are about, such as her partner Barry Keoghan or singer Shawn Mendes who Carpenter briefly dated last year. The song ‘Coincidence’ explicitly addresses the relationship between Carpenter and Mendes, with “the way you told me the truth, minus seven percent” delivered in Carpenter’s signature smooth vocals.

Short n’ Sweet is not a completely perfect album. ‘Good Graces’ has production built around a drum beat and thin synths that sound vintage but less so in a nostalgic way and more so in an early Ariana Grande B-side way that makes it sound quite dated. There are also times when the wit within Carpenter’s writing can be seen as placing too heavy a focus on appearing smart rather than having any actual substance, with it not being clear if the line “Where art thou? Why not upon me?” on ‘Bed Chem’ is really cringe or a slice of lyrical genius that I’m not smart enough to understand. However, on the whole it is a smooth, articulate pop album that truly cements Sabrina Carpenter a star within music with a sharp sense of humour, an ability to craft these odes to past relationships that are imbued with sarcasm and reliability, and polished production that is able to craft a litany of earworms within each track.

★★★★

Recommended Listening: ‘Dumb and Poetic’, ‘Taste’

Listen to Short n’ Sweet here: