Album Review: Short n' Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter

It's difficult to pinpoint what makes "Espresso" so compelling, which might actually be what makes it compelling. Between its semi-sensical, straight outta '80s Italo disco "that's that me espresso" hook, and "I'm working late, cause I'm a singer" sung like a truism, there's an uncanniness tucked into its bubbly nu-disco. Manic, mantric chants of "Yes!" around Carpenter's syrupy assertion of "Say you can't sleep / Baby, I know" to a man wrapped tight 'round her finger has that me espresso looking like a love potion -- and her spell clearly worked.

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Following on from the song of the summer, the Espresso star’s sixth album feels like it should come with its own hashtag of #Slay, #Sass or #YasQueen Up until the last couple of years, it’s probably fair to say that not many people outside of the Disney bubble were that aware of Sabrina Carpenter. An actor since she was a teenager, she had a succession of roles in Disney TV programmes and films, and released no less than five albums, none of which really punctured the zeitgeist. But then, along came a social media storm involving Olivia Rodrigo , and a little song called Espresso.

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Carpenter has had all it needs to be one. Her debut song "Can't Blame a Girl for Trying" - released a decade ago via Hollywood - was a universally accessible girls' anthem with catchy choruses and sweet oh-ohs. Fast forward to now, five albums after, and her sizable establishment in the swarming pop realm is on the brink of becoming a household name; a plethora of press since "Espresso"'s astounding success has flooded all platforms and playlists.

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Short, but not as sweet as advertised If you turned on a radio, opened a streaming app, or glanced at social media this past summer, you've likely heard Sabrina's Carpenter's name a lot. She's become one of the most prevalent mainstream artists of 2024 thanks to 'Espresso' and 'Please Please Please' - two breezy pop singles radiating with personality and quiet confidence. This led Sabrina's sixth full-length LP to become her most highly anticipated to-date, and rightfully so…after all, both tracks are certified bops.

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The most fashionable music of the 2020s is very long or very short. Taylor Swift heralded the advent of the long pop song by including four six-minute ballads in 2010's Speak Now, an album that, by crediting Swift as its sole writer, made the singer-songwriter a mainstream cultural fixation in a way not seen since James Taylor or Joni Mitchell. This shift enabled rising pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter to add an idiosyncratic touch to ubiquitous hits that sound like they could have received radio airplay in the 1980s or 1990s.

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"Short and Sweet" might be Sabrina Carpenter's sixth album, but even she says it feels more like her second. After the creative breakthrough of 2022's "Emails I Can't Send" — which we'll call her "Disney-mancipation" after nearly a decade as a child star — "S n’ S" is the powerful next step in her evolution as an artist, person and persona. You already know the persona from this album's two lead singles, "Espresso" and "Please Please Please," and their videos: A woman who's pretty but tough, funny, sassy, confident, sexually up-front and with a fiery mean streak, but who's not without insecurities and heartache.

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If all the best pop stars have a 'thing' - Lana's all-American melancholy; Olivia's pop-punk adjacency; Taylor's ferocious, insatiable capitalism (come at us, internet) - then it's with 'Short n' Sweet', Sabrina Carpenter's sixth album, that the pocket-sized Pennsylvanian finally cements hers. Where 2022's 'Emails I Can't Send' put Carpenter on the mainstream, grown-up pop map following a now-standard Disney entry route, its follow up is a personality bomb of a record that unites its disparate genres with an overflow of character at its centre: Sabrina's 'thing', as it turns out, is being a thirsty sexpot with a proclivity for racy, hilarious one liners and silly, silly boys. Though the topics of lust and love, heartache and heartbreak have been eulogised in every possible which way over the years, there's a nudge-nudge wink-wink sensibility to her that's naughty and fun in a way that feels genuine.

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"I'm stupid, but I'm clever," Sabrina Carpenter sings on "Lie to Girls," a track from Short n' Sweet. The line is a turnkey for the character the singer plays across the album's 12 tracks: a girl next door pursued by clueless hunks ("A boy who's jacked and kind/can't find his ass to save my life," she quips on "Slim Pickins"), the kind you might write off as "basic" before you discover that she has something unexpected to say. "Lie to Girls" offers sneakily incisive commentary on how guys puffing themselves up is futile because, if women are really interested in them, they'll happily make excuses for their shortcomings.

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‘Short n' Sweet’ is Sabrina Carpenter's sixth album – but it's her spiritual sophomore, since 2022's ’emails i can't send’ catapulted her into the mainstream via a spiky love triangle that ultimately inspired the songs that launched both Carpenter's rise and Olivia Rodrigo's. 'Espresso', though, was the caffeine hit that led this album launch, the most distinctive song of the summer of recent years, and a manifestation statement from Carpenter. It's true, everyone has basically been thinking about her every day since it came out.

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