On Aug. 23, Sabrina Carpenter released her well awaited new album, “Short n’ Sweet” to fans worldwide. After an explosion of popularity from her sixth studio album’s hit single release “Espresso,” and with this being her newest album since “Emails I Can’t Send” in 2022, my hopes were high and I was anxious to listen to the full thing. However, after listening to the album multiple times, I still can’t decide if my hopes were met or not.
From Disney Channel to “Singular,” I have been a long time Sabrina Carpenter fan, so I was excited when she released the hit single “Espresso” on Apr. 11, and listened to it for weeks on loop. As someone who gets easily tired of songs and has a hard time finding catchy ones, I was happy to say I was still fully enjoying and listening to the song by the time the full album was released months later. Her next released single “Please Please Please,” was good as well, but I think the reason it didn’t cause such a commotion as “Espresso” was due to the slower tempo. While “Espresso” was the powerful song of the summer, “Please Please Please” was a slower ease into the new album that both songs were later featured on.
When “Short n’ Sweet” was released a few months later, I was one of the many who woke up early on Aug. 23 to listen to the new songs, and I had very high hopes due to the popularity of “Espresso” and how much I had loved the song, but unfortunately my hopes were mistaken. Most of the songs weren’t as upbeat as I had expected and the album resembled her prior studio album “Emails I Can’t Send.”
As I listened to the songs in order, a lot of them contrast each other, where each song was either about Carpenter finding the man of her dreams or feeling like she’ll “end this life alone,” like she sings in “Slim Pickins.” “Slim Pickins” immediately is followed by “Juno,” a song where she sings all about the love of her life and how happy she is with him. After that you get “Lie To Girls,” another sad song about wanting true love, and so on.
Other than that, there wasn’t a song on the album that I didn’t like, and they were all fun to listen to, my favorite still being when “Espresso” came on. However, the music videos did make the album even better, and gave it the upbeat style I was waiting for, with the most popular one being “Taste.” The “Taste” music video followed Carpenter and actress Jenna Ortega as they viciously fought over the same guy in a bloodbath of a music video. At first I was hesitant to watch the music video, but the dark comedic story immediately made the song lighter and more upbeat, with the confident tone I was looking for in the album. The music video was definitely not what I was expecting, but it was so well done I had to love it. The shadow to the Halloween season coming up after its release, and the movie “Death Becomes Her” was largely the inspiration for the music video. The song is rumored to be about Carpenter’s past relationship with the singer Shawn Mendes and the love triangle with Camila Cabello, with evidence to many of the specific sounding lyrics in the track and actors in the music video.
All in all, the album “Short n’ Sweet” did not fail to amaze me. The long awaited album, although featuring some bitter songs, was just as sweet as I expected. I look forward to what Carpenter has next in store as she is “working late cuz [she’s] a singer.”
