On her sixth album release but still only 25? The former Disney teen star Sabrina Carpenter has played the long game beautifully. After a slew of forgettable early albums, the American is suddenly the hottest property in the pop world via a confluence of clever marketing – a high-profile romance with the Irish actor Barry Keoghan didn’t harm matters; nor did a support slot on Taylor Swift’s Eras tour – and as evidenced by both the demand and the eyebrow-raising prices for next year’s world tour.
Carpenter’s USP of being “the saucy vamp with the witty lyrics” has already set her apart from the proliferation of women singers dominating the pop world. Short n’ Sweet has already spawned two huge hits in Espresso and Please Please Please (reportedly written about her romance with Keoghan), but as it happens there is plenty of personality packed into the other songs on the album, too. “I thought if something was funny enough to make me laugh then maybe it belonged in a song,” she has said of her process. “Happy or sad.”
Humour largely outweighs heartache here. Sharpest Tool is an eye-rolling takedown of a clueless lover (“I know you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed / We had sex, I met your best friends / Then a bird flies by and you forget”), while the enjoyable country-pop pastiche of Slim Pickins sees her croon “This boy doesn’t know even the difference between there, they’re and they are / And he’s naked in my room, listing all the things he’s missing.”
The provocative glam-pop of Taste plays up Carpenter’s lascivious reputation; Bed Chem sees her playfully fantasise about her sexual connection with “the cute boy with the white jacket and the thick accent”. Dumb & Poetic and Confidence, meanwhile, are caustic rebukes delivered to a former lover.
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This is not an experimental, challenging or risk-taking record. Carpenter is clearly happy to leave that to some of her other peers. It is, however, a breezy and often very enjoyable collection of songs that treads a thin line between frivolous and throwaway – which many would argue is precisely what a pop album should do.
