Sabrina Carpenter Has a Sharp Pen on Short 'n Sweet

the rising pop starlet's latest album will only solidify her place in popular culture and music

Sabrina Carpenter has been an unstoppable force in pop in the last few years. Rolling the success of Emails I Can’t Send and the viral phenomenon of the “Nonsense” outro during live performances into two hit singles, “Espresso” and “Please, Please, Please,” and an opener slot on the Eras Tour, Carpenter delivers Short ‘n Sweet at the peak of her power. With an Instagram story co-sign from Swift and a new celebrity gossip love-triangle to drive intrigue from a number of fandoms, this album is sure to be a career-cementing success for the long-rising star.

2024 seems to be the year of the long-in-the-making pop star with artists like Carpenter and Chappell Roan, who have been bubbling under the surface for nearly a decade, claiming the chart and cultural prominence they’ve deserved. For fans, this is a treat as these seemingly newly viral TikTok sensations have the back catalog and lore to support a genuine fandom. Both Carpenter and Roan also point to a growing appetite for unabashed pop tracks that explode out of the radio with lyrics that will stick in your head, both for their catchy quality and the substance. Indie pop as a mode is beginning to be eclipsed by these brighter proclivities.

Carpenter has been on a mission of refinement across her work in the 2020s, learning how to hone her wordy style into undeniable hits. Much of the awkwardness–that did have a charm of its own–on her earlier songs is smoothed on Short ‘n Sweet while still delivering on story. The record opens with “Taste,” a strong pop song that sets a clear thematic foundation for the album. While there are certainly songs that divert, most of the album pulls from a frustrating situationship that ends with the guy in question going back to his ex-girlfriend he once promised he “outgrew.” Carpenter does note, with clear satisfaction, that this rekindling doesn’t last either.

After the drama that preceded her last album–spurred on by Olivia Rodrigo’s debut ballad “Drivers License” where Carpenter is ostensively cast as the “other woman”–I applaud her willingness to offer a clear specificity in her writing, even when it means that details will directly track to documented paparazzi photos and fuel gossip about her personal life. Perhaps, this time is easier since she finds herself standing on the moral high ground. Still, she has her fun moments of playing the villain. In “Taste,” she taunts his girlfriend with the old maxim that even though the longtime girlfriend might have him back, she’ll have to taste Carpenter in his mouth. This feels warranted as the album progresses and Carpenter throws out that this girl sent naked photos to her, presumed, boyfriend trying to lure him back in, as detailed in “Coincidence”.

While Carpenter gets plenty of hits in at the girl on the other corner of this love triangle, she reserves the hardest blows for the ex who played with her head. On “Dumb & Poetic,” she takes the most direct swing, tearing apart his character limb for limb. It’s a brilliant song and one of the shining moments on the album as Carpenter’s songwriting is left at center stage. She opens with the line, “You’re so dumb and poetic / It’s just what I fall for, I like the aesthetic.” Then she goes on to paint the picture of a man obsessed with self-help culture, constantly quoting life affirming mantras and Leonard Cohen lyrics, despite his deep well of issues. She slices through once again with, “Just ‘cause you talk like one doesn’t make you a man” and makes another swipe at this hollow wellness culture he’s invested in saying, “Save all your breath for your floor meditation… and I promise the mushrooms aren’t changing your life.” If you’ve been keeping up with a certain male pop star’s latest album roll out, this song rings particularly hilarious and true. It’s no surprise that Carpenter wrote this song with a truly A-list crew of collaborators including Amy Allen and Julia Michaels.

Still, for as much blame as she assigns others in the relationship, a large part of the album is left searching through her own role in the situationship for answers. In “Sharpest Tool,” she blithely remarks, “If that was casual, I’m an idiot,” as she tries to unpack how quickly he dropped her for his ex. In the floaty refrain, she laments how he still looms large in her head because she never got a conversation about the end of their relationship. Similarly, on “Lie to Girls,” she addresses a hypothetical guy, letting him in on a secret. He doesn’t need to lie or make himself into something he’s not because if a girl falls for him, she’ll do all that on her own. The song cuts acutely at the desperation of a crush and the pitfalls that are classically hard to avoid.

Sonically, there’s a level of confusion that creates friction in the top-to-bottom listening experience. Songs like “Juno” and “Taste” have a grounding that allows them to be the soaring, sexy pop songs that Carpenter seems to go for across the record. She gets her cheeky winks in both lyrically and in the production. Unfortunately, many of the album cuts have clashing elements that prevent them from feeling like fully realized tracks where her signature retro-pure pop vibes don’t quite gel with an experimental twang or clapping or Midnights-feeling experiment with pitched down vocals. There are clear gems on the album that make the stumbles easy to overlook, and Carpenter has a slew of potential new singles to pull from in this release.

Having held my tongue on the celebrity gossip front decently well, I do have to say that it was a Twitter thread about the love triangle of Sabrina’s fling with Shawn Mendes getting sandwiched between rekindlings with Camila Cabello that got me to listen to the album first thing in the morning. Carpenter’s tendency to lean more towards the Ariana Grande vein of pop just lands further from my personal taste, but the narrative getting pulled out of Genius clippings and arranged into a thread was too good to resist. Carpenter succeeds in creating an album that stands up to the external narrative. She takes big swings that stare it directly in its face and is able to back up the insight with quality music, truly taking a page out of Swift’s book. I say all this simply because I think that some of Carpenter’s greatest lines on the record are only enhanced by knowing the subjects of the songs, highlighting just how precisely her images capture these particular types.