[REVIEW] Short n’ Sweet
on Sabrina Carpenter’s sixth studio album, Short n’ Sweet, compulsory heterosexuality, and Beyoncé
Sabrina Carpenter is too smart to be a heterosexual woman. It’s evident by how well she plays the long game: for ten years, the “Espresso” singer developed her voice, visual identity, and sonic sensibilities under Disney’s exacting jurisdiction. Today, the result is a sharp 25-year-old superstar in sole possession of her generation’s wit and execution. Further, Carpenter’s ear for genre fusion remains unmatched amongst her peers, a feat on full display throughout her sixth studio album, Short n’ Sweet.
Carpenter’s predominant strength, like her most obvious pop predecessor, Ariana Grande, stems from chameleonic vocal abilities. Carpenter’s ability to step in and out of different spheres of pop — take the stark contrast between the Kacey Musgraves-inspired “Slim Pickins” or Christian jamboree campfire anthem “Coincidence,” co-produced by Jack Ryan of One Direction fame, and the synth-heavy “Bed Chem” which builds on a sample from The Gap Band and features writing from Julia Michaels — firmly establishes her as a must-listen on pop’s frontier. Many will note that her eligibility has been evident for years.1
Throughout a four-album tenure at Hollywood Records, Carpenter evolved her sound from Christian adolescent pop to a dynamic fusion of R&B on Broadway with a core built from dance and house. On each record, there’s indicators eagerly pointing toward what’s to come — “Two Young Hearts,” “No Words,” “Sue Me,” and “Tell Em,” for example. Stringent intentionality punctuated Carpenter’s career transition as she left Disney to sign with Island Records in 2021, earning complete creative control for the first time in her musical career. Her first release with Island and fifth studio album, emails i can’t send, highlighted a prowess for telling stories.
The confessional world built in emails centers on bad habits caused by familial disruption. It is unrestrained candor, best characterized by Carpenter’s wry observations and detached judgment. The record signaled a new, vulnerable summit for Carpenter as a songwriter. In contrast, Short n’ Sweet finds her erring on the side of caution. Best demonstrated by lead singles “Espresso,” “Please Please Please,” and “Taste,” the record shies away from displaying Carpenter’s full range of vernacular, mental agility, and creativity. Her humor hasn’t faded, but rather has been pushed down the totem pole in favor of production and aesthetic. The result is a touchstone of contemporary pop music: in order to create a masterpiece of ingenious sonic experimentation, Carpenter and team chose to play the writing game safe.
Seemingly graduated from a much-needed therapy journey, Carpenter embodies divine confidence throughout Short n’ Sweet. On “Taste,” a propulsive psychedelic rock opener, Carpenter throws and stretches her voice as she taunts her ex-lover’s new girl. She’s best imagined as a ventriloquist performing toxic femininity. “You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissing you,” she promises with a smirk. Characteristic of Carpenter’s songwriting is an effortless blend of the neurotic introspection that comes with journaling and self-righteous determination earned through multiple validation-seeking vent sessions. Her inclinations toward evil continue on the high-tempo future club staple, “Good Graces.” Over a beat catered to ‘90s video vixens, Carpenter coos the diabolical double entendre, “Break my heart and I swear I'm movin' on with your favorite athlete. Shoot his shot every night.”
It’s a common thread woven throughout the tapestry of Short n’ Sweet: sugared bubblegum pop productions with dainty vocals to hide unhinged wickedness.
Carpenter’s chameleonic expertise culminates in standout track “Juno” which interpolates Hole’s “Heaven, Tonight.” An effortless blend of retro ‘50s teen pop, ‘70s drops, pulsing ‘80s riffs, Mariah Carey-esque harmonies, and acoustic folk, Carpenter and team create a new soundtrack for breeding fetishists. Carpenter thrives in the heat of the dog days. With lines like “You make me wanna make you fall in love” and “I showed my friends, then we high-fived. Sorry if you feel objеctified,” Carpenter demonstrates a wide range of reaction and emotional expression. She’s romantic and vulgar. She’s both serious and unserious. She’s your best friend’s untouchable older sister as much as she is your boy-crazy niece who needs some sense knocked into her.
With vintage, innuendo-filled brand deals and her first-ever, high-budget arena tour — clearly designed with Old Hollywood bombshells and repressed housewives in mind —Carpenter’s promotion of Short n’ Sweet relies heavily on the concept of girlhood. Her interrogation doesn’t reach far: gossips, bimbos, victims of compulsory heterosexuality. As regressive as this seems on a superficial level, I have a strong feeling that Carpenter weaponizes her gimmick to satirize the male gaze.
Similar to Carrie Bradshaw, Carpenter uses her platform to chronicle the varied landscape of modern dating. However, where Carrie laments and languishes, Carpenter merely evolves when things don’t go her way.2
Short n’ Sweet’s main thesis: A man is only good for a laugh, lay, or lyric. Despite truly tragic tales about love triangles, emotional neglect, manipulation, and more, there’s not a single moment where the listener feels bad for Carpenter. Instead, she presents her audience with an idol to emulate: a confident and attractive woman who has great sex and therefore has to deal with the follies of men here and there.
This narrative remains true until the penultimate, Jack Antonoff-produced “Lie To Girls.” Having danced and laughed through various anecdotes, the listener suddenty succumbs to sympathy for the whole of what they represent. Flighty and frivolous until this moment, Carpenter finally drops her tongue-in-cheek bravado to consider the generational curse faced by female victims of compulsory heterosexuality. Over stubborn strums of an acoustic guitar, Carpenter sings, ”It's lucky for you I'm just like my mother, and my sisters, all my friends.” An edge enters her voice, as if she’s just realized she sings and flirts from a gilded cage as she continues, “We love to read the cold, hard facts and swear they're incorrect. We love to mistake butterflies for cardiac arrest!”
The tension of “Lie to Girls” is new. Carpenter’s vulnerability is strong and apparent, revealing the depth of restraint she’s so far demonstrated.3 When Carpenter lifts her veil of delusion, clarity explodes like a supernova. Summer ends. On “Lie to Girls,” Carpenter strolls through autumn, considering moments, once sweet, as hindsight sours their memory. Winter arrives with “Don’t Smile,” a piano-prominent, spectral bedrotting ballad that doubles as an R&B masterpiece. Over low-tempo drums and echoing reverb, Carpenter sheds her invincible modern woman alter ego and cries, “Don't smile because it happened, cry because it's over. You're supposed to think about me every time you hold her.”
Short N’ Sweet is a record that becomes less sweet with repeat listens. It’s a cautionary tale: An anxious manifesto to guide adolescent women away from dating seriously.
If there’s disappointment to be garnered with Short N’ Sweet, it unfortunately lies within the record’s indifference to genre. Addressing a love triangle entanglement in her personal life with her music for a second time, Carpenter shows a talent for reinventing the wheel and creating fresh entries in a well-populated genre. While well-executed, Carpenter’s Lemonade moment lacks the aspirational record’s narrative strength. Carpenter spends the majority of the album’s run-time constructing the setting and verbally tearing her main antagonist limb from limb (See the scathing but slow-moving “Dumb and Poetic.”) After exerting so much on said exposition and an artfully horny B-plot, Carpenter briefly turns inward for a climax of emotional self-actualization and rushed denouement.
Without a complete narrative, the record leaves the listener desperate for more. I want Carpenter’s country record, I want Carpenter’s belting ballad record, I want Carpenter’s club rat record. I don’t care what she’s singing about, I just want to hear how she sings about it. At the end of the day, is that such a disappointment? Clearly, she has the voice and mind to create something to quench the public’s thirst.
Carpenter’s “overnight success” is yet another example of 2024 existing as the year of second chances: Industry veterans like Chappell Roan, Victoria Monét, Charli XCX, and Tinashe have finally reached staggering heights of viral attention and commerical success after years of excellent output.
Short n’ Sweet also provides the most damning evidence that Kim Cattrall’s Samantha Jones should have led Sex and the City, but I digress!
Case in point: The sweet vocals and country-disco fusion on “Please Please Please” artfully disguise an ominous desperation.