Sabrina Carpenter has had one hell of a year. Starting this year opening for Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour to then hard launch a new relationship with Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan all before dropping Espresso, the song of the summer. I think we can all agree that the caffeinated bop was pretty much inescapable all summer, and its catchy rhythm saw it exceed over one billion streams on Spotify in under six months. With the success of Espresso and the follow-up single Please Please Please, Sabrina’s fifth studio album Short n’ Sweet has been one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year.
It can’t be understated just how unusually abundant the music landscape has been this year. With basically every single pop girl dropping an album or at least a single, the competition to pull focus has been fraught. Sabrina, amidst this saturated market, managed to draw in a huge audience with ease. After listening to Short n’ Sweet I think her reign as a pop princess is only just beginning.
Her previous album, emails i can’t send, described as her first ‘big girl album’ was received well. Hits such as Nonsense and Feather put Carpenter on the map and let us get a sense of Sabrina’s unique point of view as a songwriter. Many of the songs on the album are more introspective and emotionally raw, which led me to be curious how the new record would compare in its content. As much as I enjoy the lead singles from Short n’ Sweet, I was a little nervous the whole album would be geared toward radio-friendly pop tracks and abandon the more paired back and emotional side that was explored on emails i can’t send.
The album opens with Taste, which serves as its third single. Unlike the first two singles which centre around her relationship with Barry Keoghan, Taste seems to instead taunt the current partner of one of Carpenter’s exes. She sings about how she will be tasting Sabrina on the lips of the guy in question. Sonically the song follows the same summery pop vibe that the previous singles had, cementing Carpenter further as an essential on any summer playlist. I was glad to see the album open with such a strong track, it sets the tone for the next 36 minutes of run time and lets you know that this album is primarily made to be fun.
Short n’ Sweet then brings us to Please Please Please, a song I’m sure we all know at this point. The sonic direction stays consistent on most of the tracks, playing with Jack Antonoff-esque synth-pop with a heavy dash of acoustic guitars thrown in for good measure. Antonoff, a long-time collaborator of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey, actually co-produced a number of the tracks on Short n’ Sweet. His influence can be heard across the album while feeling distinct enough to give Sabrina a signature sound that has only been further refined from her previous work.
Antonoff’s production is most apparent on the album’s fifth track, Coincidence. This song deals with the same relationship as Taste but this time with a more raw approach. Many fans immediately associated this song and a few others with Shawn Mendes, who reportedly had a brief relationship with Sabrina in 2023. Sabrina, on Coincidence, sings about the frustration of being in a precarious relationship with someone who has unfinished business with an ex-girlfriend. Possibly because of the emotional nature of the lyrical content, but the song is heavily driven by guitar with little of the synth-pop influence that dominated the previous four tracks.
Coincidence establishes the secondary sonic influence on this album, country music. Aspects of country motifs appear in several of the songs on Short n’ Sweet but take the centre position in the song Slim Pickins. This song feels almost like a modern interpretation of music Dolly Parton was making in the early 70s, paired with Carpenter’s easily identified tongue-in-cheek lyricism. As someone only familiar with Carpenter’s more recent discography, I’m unsure if she has roots in country music, but she is quite comfortable slotting into a country star role.
Throughout the album, the songs jump between the 80s-tinged synth pop-inspired songs like Espresso or the 10th track Juno and country-inspired tracks. Most notably the album’s 6th track Bed Chem really leans into an 80s vibe, giving us the sexiest song on the album as it explores Carpenter’s desires and attraction. This is particularly impressive when you consider that, as the name implies, this is a pretty short album. In the space of 12 tracks, Sabrina can deliver a project that feels cohesive while exploring different influences and styles. Vocally, Carpenter sounds very polished on Short n’ Sweet. Particularly in the ballads Lie to Girls and Dumb & Poetic her voice is refined and she shows good control in her delivery. Her vocals have a clear radio-friendly quality to them but it is refreshing to see her willing to push her style a little on these tracks, exploring her range and making subtle tweaks to how she sings.
I feel this album is also notable because of its length. In a year with almost countless releases from her peers, the pressure to drop a long album probably weighed on Carpenter. Longer albums are thought to perform better on streaming platforms, something that has led to some serious musical marathons of albums this year. Immediately Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter come to mind. While I really enjoyed both of these albums, I appreciate the editing that goes into making a shorter but overall more impactful record. With Short n’ Sweet each song feels complete and cohesive to the others. I feel she has done this more successfully than some of her peers who have opted to produce shorter projects. This album feels like summer and, just like the fleeting nature of the warmer months, it’s over quicker than you may have hoped for but each song is impactful and none feel like filler to boost run time.
My critique of the album is that Carpenter may have left it a touch too late in the season to release such a summery project. Launching in late August, most of the summer has passed, meaning we only have a small window of time to enjoy this music in the season that it evokes most strongly. The dominance of Espresso this summer also meant that by the time Short n’ Sweet released the song felt overplayed and in my initial cycle through the album I was close to skipping past its lead single. The way albums are released these days is a much bigger conversation than Sabrina Carpenter alone, but this is a prime example of why many people wish the older model of releasing an album and then dropping singles instead of the reverse serves the consumer better.
Short n’ Sweet is a true triumph for Sabrina, it feels more mature and more self-realised than her previous album. Her vision was clear going into creating this body of work. She maintains the emotionally aware lyricism of her precious work while continuing to lean into her new role as a certified pop hitmaker. In the long run, I don’t know if this album will endure as a magnum opus for Carpenter as I feel her best work is yet to come, but Short n’ Sweet feels like a huge step toward her artistic apex. I also imagine the album will hugely resonate with people younger than I am, listening to it made me feel nostalgic for my younger adulthood and I’m sure it would have hit much harder if I was listening to it at 23 and not 26. Short n’ Sweet is ultimately, one of the most fun albums to drop this year and is well worth working into your rotation. Especially while we still have some sun left.
