Sabrina Carpenter - Short N’ Sweet

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. When she got her Radio 1 Big Weekend performance censored for a particularly racy ‘Nonsense’ outro, you can picture her management team in the sidelines, head in hands, crafting an apologetic email saying they really, truly did tell her not to. It’s why the equally ridiculous “that’s that me, espresso” refrain of ‘Short n’ Sweet’’s first big hit landed so well: like A-list pop’s version of Barbara Windsor in a Carry On film, Sabrina is totally in on the joke. 

‘Short n’ Sweet’ skips around within the equally petite framework of its 36 minute run time. Going from the big breezy pop of ‘Taste’ to the acoustic, Rodrigo-esque balladry of ‘Dumb & Poetic’ to the country twang of ‘Slim Pickins’, the album is – probably smartly, given the modern playlist culture – a series of relatively unlinked singles rather than a record that necessarily begs to be listened to as a whole. Some styles suit her more than others – ‘Coincidence’’s stripped-back strums allow the zingers to really shine (“What a surprise, your phone just died / Your car drove itself from LA to her thighs”), while ‘Bed Chem’’s retro ‘90s breathiness is camped up to levels that befit its equally tongue-in-cheek lyrics (“Come right on me / I mean camaraderie”). Others, like the R&B adjacent ‘Good Graces’ lack the same sonic punch, but even on ‘Short n’ Sweet’’s less standout moments, Sabrina is still the spicy kick at its centre, ready to deliver a cheeky wink at every turn.