Sabrina is short and this album is pretty sweet!
Sabrina Carpenter’s new album Short ‘n Sweet was released on August 23rd. As a fan who bought tickets for the concert before the album was even released, I had high hopes.
Based solely on the album singles “Espresso” and “Please Please Please”, I knew I had to get tickets to the concert. As a long-time Carpenter, I was ecstatic at the opportunity to get tickets during the pre-sale. I had low hopes after many failed Ticketmaster fights for Eras Tour tickets, but I was graced with well-priced tickets and good seats!
Recently, pop artists haven’t seemed to be taking their craft as seriously as before. Hit artists like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande, for example, have been putting out albums that seem to lack their usual creative spark. As a fan of both of those beautiful and talented women, it was disappointing to see them release unoriginal and repetitive music just so they could hit the charts.
This combined with the emergence of big-headed new artists like Jojo Siwa, who claim to have invented their type of music (but don’t even write their own songs!), the pop genre has taken some big hits this year. It might just be back on top, though, with Ms. Carpenter’s new release!
- “Taste”
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If this song doesn’t win an award for Best Music Video of the Year I might just riot! (Update: it did not…) If I were my 15-year-old self again, questioning my sexuality while also being a victim of heteronormativity, this tune would have ignited my bisexual spark!
“Taste” is an upbeat and spunky song rumored to be about Sabrina’s previous relationship with Shawn Mendes after he and Camila Cabello broke up. In the song she sings, “I heard you’re back together and if that’s true, you’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you.” Considering Mendes and Cabello are back together, it’s more than apparent who the song is about. It’s obvious Carpenter has some resentment towards how the whole situation played out as she sings, “He’s funny now, all his jokes hit different, guess who he learned that from.” Throughout the album, she keeps this spunky tone in her lyrics which shows how calculated and clever she is with all of her lyrical choices.
The song is reminiscent of bedroom pop with a mainstream pop-rock twist to it. It toys with simplistic instrumentals, mostly guitar and drums, but adds in fun backing vocals and clapping throughout the song.
The music video (starring Jenna Ortega!) follows the film ‘Death Becomes Her’ almost scene by scene. Jenna’s character is with Sabrina’s ex-boyfriend, whom she still has feelings for. The two fight each other (when I say fight, I mean chainsaw through the other’s torso) trying to keep the other away from some mediocre white guy. As Jenna dates this guy, the only thing she can think of (or taste!) are the marks Sabrina permanently left on him. This leads to the iconic kissing scene between the two, depicting the remnants of Sabrina left on all of her exes (especially Shawn).
- “Please please please”
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Never had I ever expected a country, disco, and pop medley to grace my ears. But here it is, and it’s better than I ever could have expected.
This is maybe one of Carpenter’s most iconic songs, aimed at her new beau Barry Keoghan. She sings in a deep country tone, “I beg you don’t embarrass me motherf*cker” and then in a light angelic voice, “If you don’t wanna cry to my music don’t make me hate you prolifically.” She is warning Keoghan not to mess up like her exes did, or else it’ll make another banger of an album (and I am so indescribably here for it)!
This song produced another phenomenal music video, this time starring Carpenter and Keoghan. The costume designer alone deserves the world’s biggest shoutout- thanks for the Halloween costume inspiration!
This is one of my favorite tracks on the album and was the absolute perfect choice as a single for the album. It’s the kind of ear-candy that will consume my mind for months to come!
- “good graces”
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This is the ultimate lover-girl-turned-nonchalant anthem.
In the song, Sabrina opens up a bit more about how past relationships have changed her perspective on finding love. Now her headspace is, “Boy it’s not that complicated, you should stay in my good graces. Or I’ll switch it up like that, so fast, ’cause no one’s more amazing, at turning lovin’ into hatred.” Even though this is (in my opinion) one of the sadder songs on the album, it keeps up a peppy beat, emphasizing how quickly she’ll forget about someone and her desire not to be burned twice. It shows how fast she has to stop caring for someone because most of her love life is displayed to the public and she doesn’t want a bad crush to lead to bad press.
The song ends with the repetition of the line, “I won’t give a f*ck about you” over and over and over. It feels almost like she’s repeating the phrase to convince herself that she doesn’t care anymore. Many of us can understand this feeling of liking someone but repeating their flaws as a way to suppress our emotions, and Sabrina captured that feeling perfectly in this song.
- “Sharpest Tool”
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Another sad song but this time, it’s acoustic!
This is the straight version of “Casual” by Chappell Roan and it’s equally as heartbreaking. The song has an almost emotionless tone as Carpenter sings, “We had sex, I met your best friends, then a bird flies by and you forget. I don’t hear a word till your guilt creeps in on a Tuesday.” In the song she opens up about a previous relationship where she gave all of herself for this guy, only for him to forget about her and go back to his ex.
She tries to excuse his actions multiple times throughout the song by saying he’s not the “sharpest tool” in the shed. She uses this to justify him ghosting her after sex, guilt-tripping her into opening up to him before ghosting her again, and talking to other girls while they were together. He leaves her feeling lost, confused, and guilty for his actions.
She continues the pattern of repetitive endings by singing, “We never talk about it” and “We don’t talk about it” multiple times. It doesn’t seem like this is a coping mechanism though; this time it feels like she’s going crazy with the unanswered questions as she never got closure from the fling.
- “Coincidence”
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Another song allegedly about Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, but this time sprinkle in cheating allegations!
“Coincidence” tells the story of a guy Sabrina’s with “coincidentally” getting together with his ex. It turns out that his ex happens to be in the same city on the same night as him, and then begins sending him pictures dressed scantily-clad. The story climaxes when Sabrina sings, “What a surprise, your phone just died. Your car drove itself from LA to her thighs. Palm Springs looks nice but who’s by your side? Damn it, she looks like the girl you outgrew.” In an act of total coincidence, rumors of Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello started circulating at this summer’s Coachella in Palm Springs … sounds fishy to me.
This song once again ends with repetition, this time repeating the word, “coincidence.” The cheeky beat of the song and the final cheer, “coincidence!” make the tone seem more passive-aggressive than hurt.
- “Bed Chem”
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Barry Keoghan and Sabrina Carpenter meet-cute alert!
I love this song not only for its clever lyrics of sexual innuendo but also for the openness of female sexual desire expressed. It’s refreshing to see female songwriters being honest about experiencing attraction before emotional connection. She sings, “Who’s the cute boy with the white jacket and the thick accent like (ahhhh) maybe it’s all in my head, but I bet we’d have really good bed chem.”
This song is sung very casually; it feels like a friend reiterating a flirty conversation they had to you. Some of my favorite lyrics include, “Come right on me, I mean camaraderie, said you’re not in my time zone but you wanna be. Where art thou? Why not uponeth me?”. It reminds me of her outros for the song “Nonsense” from her Emails I Can’t Send album where she also toys with flirtation and sexual innuendo by changing the lyrics for each show.
- “Espresso”
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This upbeat song of the summer was Sabrina’s first single for Short ‘n Sweet, and while it’s one of my least favorites on the album, I do think it was released at the perfect time for it to be appreciated. It truly reached its full potential as the song of this summer and many more summers to come!
This is another great example of the consistently fun lyricism in this album. A lyric that has stumbled into my permanent vocabulary is, “I’m working late, ’cause I’m a singer.” Because aren’t we all? But there are also plenty of honorary mentions such as, “Soft skin and I perfumed it for ya, I know I Mountain Dew it for ya.”
Overall, this song is an amalgamation of everything a fun girl-pop song should be. It has a catchy beat, playful lyrics, and spoken words dabbled throughout it.
- “Dumb & Poetic”
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Woah! I just got whip-lash from this change in tone!
This heartbreak song strips itself of the high “production” feel from the rest of the album and is significantly more introspective and personal. It shows off the raw emotion Carpenter is able to portray through her voice and it’s genuinely amazing.
She tells the story of a failed toxic relationship as she sings, “Gold star for highbrow manipulation, and ‘love everyone’ is your favorite quotation, jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen.” This is a Taylor Swift-esque lyric, as upon further research you’ll find that Leonard Cohen’s most famous song “Suzanne” is a soft poetic song about being with a girl who is so “crazy” in love with you that you stay in spite of not returning those deep feelings.
This song is made to remind everyone of a very specific man that unfortunately is in many people’s lives. Sabrina sings, “Don’t think you understand, just ’cause you act like one doesn’t make you a man. Don’t think you understand, just ’cause you leave like one doesn’t make you a man.” These lyrics spend more time playing into deeper themes of toxic masculinity than many of Sabrina’s previous songs, and it’s definitely refreshing to see.
- “Slim Pickins”
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This song is my personal favorite from the album. It’s a good transitional song that’s still about relationships but with a more humorous tone.
The acoustic guitar used and Carpenter’s accent remind me of a classic country song with a banjo. Her lyrics follow this same country pattern by cutting off the ending of words. For example, “It’s slim pickins, if I can’t have the one I love, I guess it’s you that I’ll be kissin’, just to get my fixin’s.” While the song handles the sad topic of unrequited love, the sultry and sarcastic tone maintains the humor from several of the album’s other songs.
This is another very quotable song with lyrical treats like, “Since the good ones call their exes wasted and since the Lord forgot my gay awakenin’, then I’ll just be here in the kitchen, serving up some moanin’ and b*tchin’.”
- “Juno”
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Moving on from breakup songs, “Juno” returns listeners to the wistful feeling of being in a happy relationship and is one big metaphor for the movie Juno.
Carpenter continues to be open about the emotional and sexual aspects of relationships with the chorus, singing, “I know you want my touch for life, if you love me right then who knows, I might let you make me Juno, you know I just might let you lock me down tonight. One of me is cute but two, though? Give it to me baby, you make me wanna make you fall in love.” For reference, the movie ‘Juno’ follows a pregnant teenage girl (played by Elliot Page) and her baby daddy (played by Micheal Cera) on their journey as they decide what to do with the baby.
This is an incredibly kitschy and cute song; I love the movie references and balance between movie soundtrack and radio pop hit that was used.
- “Lie to girls”
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“Lie to Girls” is about being self-deprecating and gaslighting yourself in the hopes of overlooking a person’s flaws to remain in love with them. Sabrina sings, “We love to read the cold hard facts and swear they’re incorrect. We love to mistake butterflies for cardiac arrest.” This is more of an anti-romance song, which is surprising compared to many of the other songs on the album.
Carpenter mimics the feeling of being hurt over and over again by someone who is supposed to keep you safe and make you feel loved. She continues the pattern of repetition at the end of this song as she sings, “Girls will cry and girls will lie” multiple times, eventually ending with, “They’ll cry and girls will lie and do it till the day they die for you.” This is in stark contrast to her other songs like “Espresso”, “Juno”, and “Bed Chem” as it shows lost hope and grievance over a past relationship.
- “Don’t smile”
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“Don’t Smile” is the perfect closing track to this album. It reflects the ideas of the first song “Taste” in which Carpenter sings about her mark on past relationships, except this time she’s less confident about her significance to her previous partner. Here she sings, “Oh you’re supposed to think about me every time you hold her,” whereas in “Taste” the lyrics make it seem like she knows he’ll be thinking about her.
This is about not being over old relationships and that being okay. Carpenter is honest about wanting her ex to be sad, longing, and regretful, but also knows that won’t realistically come to fruition.
As she did in all of the songs that followed the thematic approach of break-ups, she repeats lyrics as a close to the song and the album. Carpenter leaves listeners with the final message of, “I want you to miss me, I want you to miss me.”