Short n' Sweet (2024), a review

Please, please, please, give me a new me espresso joke.

Sabrina Carpenter in 2024 has proven to be the little pop star that could. After a decade of unsuccessful attempts to cross over into the mainstream, she’s finally had two honest-to-god mega hits from her latest record, the cheekily named ‘Short n’ Sweet’ (2024).

This summer has been vindication for every Twitter user that has published a tweet about ‘Sue Me’ in the past six years. The seven people that purchased both ‘Singular: Act I’ and ‘Singular: Act II’, and thus made jokes about Beyonce copying her. Whichever stan can recite the rambling verses of ‘Skinny Dipping’ while writing a thread defending her against the fifteen-year-old Olivia Rodrigo stans.

In a year full of unexpected success stories (hello, Chappell Roan!) this may get overlooked, but this avalanche of success feels earned. It’s not that she’s been everywhere either – it’s surprisingly easy to avoid Miss Carpenter as a persona. But her music has saturated the market to such an absurd degree that she really hasn’t had to over promote. In many ways, she’s been promoting this record for her whole career.

Which is why, I’m sorry to say, the album left a sour taste in my mouth.

It’s a solid record. The type of pop release that promises future projects will be better. Sprinkled with enough personality, humour, and brightness that the often sad or bitter turns don’t feel burdensome.

But it’s also an album that feels like dress up. Even moreso than ‘emails i can’t send’ (2022), which saw Carpenter draw from fellow pop princesses like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande, to mixed results. If that record was Carpenter finally finding her footing in mainstream sounds, ‘Short n’ Sweet’ is her refining the mood board.

Gone are the Swift-esque, faux-poetic, rambling verses, and instead we get a lot of sexy-come-cutesy come ons and purring of her Grande-lite productions. ‘Espresso’ tweaked the formula enough that it’s basically an homage to ‘Hot Pink’ era Doja Cat, but something like ‘Good Graces’ is a blatant attempt to recreate the magic of the poppier stuff on ‘Positions’ (2020). ‘Bad Chem’ introduces a retro vibe to this formula but could easily have showed up as a ‘Sweetener’ (2018) era single.

‘Short n’ Sweet’ also has its share of breakup tracks, like ‘Dumb & Poetic’, which eviscerates a nameless Shawn Mendes (allegedly) for playing enlightened while playing Carpenter. ‘Don’t Smile’ is probably the best track on the album, and it too plays at the bitter breakup to great results. She really hits her stride in the final third of the record, once the obvious play towards hitmaking is over with.

‘Taste’ opens the record by turning the venom towards an unnamed Camilla Cabello (again, allegedly) by explaining how the memory of her will always linger in that renewed relationship. It is also one of the low points on the record, but somehow the third single. It’s catchy and has a mildly 2000s-lite pop-rock groove to it, so maybe it’ll be another top ten smash for her. I still prefer ‘Dumb & Poetic’ and the specifics of her frustrations towards the man, rather than this generic cattiness.

Carpenter is at her best when she’s precise. She’s more than a beautiful blonde with a nice voice. This isn’t Pia Mia. Her music doesn’t pack the same punch when she’s fronting universal pop songs, which is why the two preceding hits from this record have been so exact to her public persona. ‘Espresso’ has a catchy hook, but it also contains little flourishes that don’t exactly make it a diary entry, but at least a strong Tinder profile. ‘Please Please Please’ takes this and goes even further, and the best stuff on ‘Short n’ Sweet’ is at least somewhat invested in making it about her. Unfortunately, there are enough stabs at the generic to make the record feel underwhelming.

There’s something cynical about the entirety of the project. Carpenter is going for pop dominance here, and it makes the stabs at country music ala Kacey Musgraves feel a little bit too well timed. ‘Slim Pickins’ is an egregious example, and while cute, isn’t really good enough to sit on the tracklist. ‘Sharpest Tool’ makes the most out of the vibe, while the guitar heavy ‘Coincidence’ should probably have been the single leading the album out of Summer and into the US Autumn season. Maybe they’re saving the big sing-along vibe for later in the year?

The album feels like it was made specifically for the moment, which may be coincidental, but makes it also feel a touch artificial. In many ways, it reminds me of Katy Perry’s ‘Prism’, in that you’re seeing a professional produce a product that mostly exists to be sold. Lots of personality and flair, with ambition towards something more exciting that gets shafted to album cuts. Maybe it’s a fault of my increasing irrelevance to pop radio, but Carpenter is probably better than this. Or if not better, at least capable of more interesting.

I described the album on Twitter as ‘a pitching session’, and that’s still accurate. A collection of pop songs where Carpenter is putting a decade of trial and error into one grand statement of intent. You see her in all her most successful modes, with maximum opportunities for success. In that way only I may consider it ambitious.

In many ways, this record mirrors a lot of the disappointing trends I’ve seen in pop albums this year. Lots of promise, not a lot of anything else. ‘eternal sunshine’ was the concept-less concept album, ‘Radical Optimism’ was the sober psychedelic record, and ‘Short n’ Sweet’ is the ambitious pop takeover, done as safely as possible.

2024 was treated early on as a year that pop fans had to be excited for. Albums by the biggest names in the business. Genre explorations by the most lauded artists alive. SZA was supposed to release more than one song. But everything has underwhelmed in ways I can’t really explain. The biggest moments of the year have come from relative no-names and rising stars battling it out to establish themselves against a rising tide of country stars, who dominate the charts like they’re bloody Madonna and MJ in 1988. Not everything that has stuck around has been good (Benson Boone), but it’s been interesting.

I’m extremely happy for Carpenter, who definitely paid her dues for this success. The album is competent and listenable. I’m saving a few of these tracks. But it’s also boring in its proficiency. She could do this in her sleep. It never over-extends itself. I may be overlaying my own frustrations with pop music this year onto Carpenter, but I won’t pretend the album works for me as a singular product.

Top Tracks: Espresso, Bad Chem, Dumb & Poetic, Don’t Smile