Sabrina Carpenter has been inescapable this summer—from my friends playing “Please Please Please” at max volume in my car (originally against my will) to messages etched in the walls of Berkshire Running Camp’s bunks: STREAM NONSENSE!!! The 25-year-old pop sensation’s “Short N’ Sweet” sees Carpenter establishing her longevity and hitmaking ability after her breakthrough album, “emails i can’t send,” was released in the summer of 2022.
“Short n’ Sweet” is just that. The 36-minute album is filled to the brim with intoxicatingly sweet synths, hooks, and heavily-produced electric guitars. That isn’t to say it’s an album full of repetitive fluff—quite the opposite. Carpenter juggles a myriad of influences throughout the album’s 12 tracks, from borderline country twang (“Slim Pickins”) to full-blown, synthesizer-filled R&B (“Good Graces”). Even the opening track is a deviation from Carpenter’s classic sound. “Taste” is a neo-rock fusion hit filled with irony and wit: “Oh, I leave quite an impression/Five feet to be exact.” Carpenter is not self-conscious about her height, which is explicitly mentioned in the album title as well as in the vinyl album’s description: “a pocket-sized popstar with a larger than life artistic presence.”
Carpenter pulls off this multitude of vocal styles with ease, largely because her voice is huge. Her range is massive, and although her low tones are sometimes breathy, she is able to pull off a borderline contralto during “Please Please Please” with relative ease, a stark contrast to the bubbly high soprano she utilizes throughout the rest of the album.
To my many avid fans, I know. You may be entirely lost if you haven’t listened to pop music in the last two years. That’s OK! Here’s some help:
Carpenter’s sudden ascent to stardom seems questionable—How is she here? There’s
a simple answer: years of painfully hard
work. When she was just 10 years old, her
father built her a recording studio in their small-town home in East Greenville,
Pennsylvania. She immediately began posting acoustic song renditions to YouTube and, within the same calendar
year, was scouted by Miley Cyrus’ “The Next Miley Cyrus Project,” placing third in the final section.
Over the next decade, Carpenter would fulfill a five- album deal under Hollywood Records (Disney’s record label) while performing live and as a voice actor on many movies and TV shows. “Short N’ Sweet” is Carpenter’s second album under Island Records, a venture from her prior deal that has brought her exponentially more success and widespread fame than she ever achieved with Disney. A tried-and-true Hollywood story but still impressive nonetheless, Carpenter is the first artist since The Beatles to chart their first three top-five hits during the same week.
Beyond the numbers, the album is perhaps the most listenable I’ve reviewed so far. Every song is perfectly smooth, and Carpenter’s wit seeps through her lyrics: You can sense her eye-rolling and painfully sharp humor throughout every second of “Please Please Please” and “Sharpest Tool.” My favorite Carpenter song is (sigh) “Nonsense,” but “Good Graces” is a close second. “Short N’ Sweet” is packed with the same balance of pop appeal and clever innuendos that has made Carpenter’s rise one of the most entertaining in music in the post-COVID world, and the album has a vitality reminiscent of Olivia Rodrigo’s “GUTS.” Carpenter is saying she’s here to stay, whether you like it or not.
