Sabrina Carpenter ‘Short n’Sweet’ Make You Question Music Identity In a Good Way

Short n’Sweet is out, but unlike the kind of sunshine daze the global smash “Espresso” has placed listeners, the rest of the album is…somehow unimpressive. There are a handful of songs (all about love and heartbreak), but except for the ones that draw immediate comparisons to existing smash hits, Short n’Sweet is…forgettable.

Departing from her Disney identity, Sabrina Carpenter is finding who she is. Short n’Sweet, being her first personal album has set her free from the pre-defined roles and expectations. The outside noises have quieted down, and now, she has to look within. There’s only one task she has to do for this album — to figure out who she is, musically, and come back with an album that shows who she is. The answer is somehow a reflection of pop culture itself.

Short n’Sweet consists of smart pop songs that glossily cover basically everyone and everything important enough in pop music in the last couple of years. Short n’Sweet features a smooth summer groove like Miley Cyrus’s Summer Vacation with the same atmospheric backdrop and laidback beats. Her voice switches between Ariana Grande’s perfect sweetness and a nasal Olivia Rodrigo rock pop edge. “Dumb & Poetic” is basically a 2.0 version of Lana Del Rey’s “Young & Beautiful” paired with Rodrigo's “Driver’s License” delivery. “Espresso” is still reusing exhilarating transitions in Harry Styles’ 2022 album (though there’s no denying her language-mangling genius that made this song a smash hit).

The obvious Taylor Swift storytelling + Olivia Rodrigo’s teenage angst is in “Lie To Girls,” but unlike Rodrigo who has fought a path forward from the previous Disney glory she was in, Carpenter is still somehow lost in the shadow cast by those before her.

Short n’Sweet seems to follow the typical TikTok hack to popularity — figure out what’s trending and ride the train yourself. There’s not a lot of Sabrina Carpenter in the entire album — or perhaps, she has no idea what makes a song a Sabrina Carpenter song.

There’s a loss of identity in Short n’Sweet, but aren’t we all in one way or another? Between heartbreak and intense lust, there’s the endless sadness that increasingly feels like a void by day — that’s what Short n’Sweet is about.

“I hope they find whatever they need to guide them through their life through my mistakes because I think the more open I am with my experiences, the more that other people are like, ‘Oh, maybe that’s OK that that happened to me. It’s not the end of the world,’” Carpenter told Rolling Stone in reflection on the album and fame. “I cried every day then. I don’t cry every day now.”

“When I was younger, I think I’d almost feel pressure to write about mature subject matter because of the people around you being like, ‘This is something that is cool and what works.’ I didn’t do it until I felt like it was actually authentic to me,” she confessed. “Those real moments where I’m just a 25-year-old girl who’s super horny are as real as when I’m going through a heartbreak and I’m miserable and I don’t feel like a person.”