“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 “s 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. The songs here are nearly all about love, every kind of it: True love, stupid love, crushes, I-really-should-know-better love that’s actually lust, revenge, both sides of infidelity, and, especially on the last two songs, heartbreak. But mostly, along with the effervescent hooks the album’s lead singles have led fans to expect, there’s even more of the “Did she just say what I thought she said?” in the lyrics, which are filled with f-bombs, sexual innuendos and hilarious put-downs that are even more withering because she sings nearly all of them so sweetly.
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Like what? “Try to come off like you’re soft and well-spoken/ Jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen” (“Dumb and Poetic”); “Last week, you didn’t have any doubts/ This week, you’re holding space for her tongue in your mouth” (“Coincidence”); “I showed my friends, then we high-fived/ Sorry if you feel objеctified” (“Juno”); “Where art thou? Why not uponeth me?” (“Bed Chem”); “I heard you’re back together and if that’s true/ You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you” (“Taste”); “Heartbreak is one thing, my ego’s another/ I beg you, don’t embarrass me, motherfucker” (“Please Please Please”); and, er, “I’m so fuckin’ horny” (“Juno”). Subtext: We can have fun but don’t mess with me.
True to its title, the album cruises quickly a wild variety of moods and musical genres over the course of its 12 songs and 36 minutes, meshing pop, R&B, alt-rock and even country into a far-reaching but surprisingly cohesive whole. There are flashes of feathery ‘80s synthesizers, ‘90s R&B and the occasional waft of Ariana and Taylor, but part of the album’s cohesion comes from putting complimentary songs together. For example, the sharp sweetness of the opening “Taste” segues smoothly into the Dolly Parton-meets-ABBA of “Please Please Please” even though they sound nothing alike, and the two acoustic-based songs — the ballad “Dumb and Poetic” and the country-leaning “Slim Pickins” — are grouped together, creating a mini acoustic set in the middle of the album.
Although the album features many of the same collaborators from “s,” here co-writer Amy Allen (who’s having a blockbuster year with Tate McRae and Justin Timberlake as well as every song on “Short n’ Sweet”) and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan (both One Direction and Harry Styles alums) have stepped forcefully into the forefront, with the ubiquitous Jack Antonoff making his versatile mark on four songs. Not surprisingly, the Taylorisms peak one of his contributions, “Sharpest Tool,” but you also catch a little on “Bed Chem,” which lays a Swiftian polysyllabic melody on top of a lite-R&B musical bed.
But make no mistake, this is Carpenter’s show all the way, and the songs here are masterfully versatile: “Taste” could be an alt-rock anthem if the guitars were louder, “Good Graces” is a fast-paced blast of ‘90s R&B-pop, and “Slim Pickins” just needs a fiddle to be a full-on country song, but instead they fuse several styles into a diverse but consistent sound that holds through the entire album.
Yet after all the sass and sex and swagger, the album ends on a bittersweet note with the wistful “Lie to Girls” (“You don’t have to lie to girls/ If they like you, they’ll just lie to themselves”) and the closing “Don’t Smile,” a wistful Janet Jackson-esque ballad where Carpenter’s heavily echoed voice drops any pretense of toughness and flips an old cliché on its head — “Don’t smile because it happened/ Cry because it’s over” — and sings with sadness about a lost love. It’s an unexpectedly tender ending to an album that not only establishes Carpenter as a multifaceted singer, but also multidimensional superstar.
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