Maria Arozamena
An underrated perk of living in one of the new colleges: the distance from central campus gives me 20 extra minutes to be alone with my thoughts — and my music. The daily walks up and down Prospect usually consist of people-watching, daydreams about my (inevitable) first-year fall romance and the loop of songs on my playlist.
It was particularly kind of Sabrina Carpenter to treat us North Campus dwellers to a brand-new album just before classes began. Thanks to my commute and the album’s aptly brief runtime, I can listen to the entirety of “Short n’ Sweet” at least once a day — and trust me, I do.
It’s Carpenter’s sixth record, but only her second since she left behind her days as a Disney Channel child star. Her 2022 album, “emails i can’t send,” was, by all accounts, a successful breakthrough into mainstream pop, with singles like “Nonsense” earning her a spot as an opener on Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour.
But “Espresso,” the snappy cut about Carpenter’s effortless tendency to make men addicted, changed everything.
On Sept. 4, Billboard declared “Espresso” the song of the summer. NBC featured the song in its ads for the summer Olympic Games. Vulture interviewed a linguistics professor to unpack its impact on everyday English usage (see “Why You Can’t Stop Saying ‘That’s That Me, Espresso”).
Carpenter’s string of summer hits, her appearances at festivals like Coachella and her high-profile relationship with actor Barry Keoghan poised “Short n’ Sweet” to become an instant phenomenon.
It’s no surprise, then, that the album skyrocketed to the top of the Billboard 200. But the record’s popularity might represent more than Carpenter’s knack for catchy hooks. Rather, she might be filling a niche that today’s pop has left vacant.
Much of the album feels like Carpenter’s unpolished, impulsive, private thoughts strung together. But what Carpenter sacrifices in poetics, she makes up for in pure authenticity and humor. The result? A cohesive story of a person with deep fears and vibrant confidence; obsessive tendencies and commitment issues; libido and longing. In other words, she offers a bold, uncensored take on the lives we all live.
The album kicks off with “Taste,” an earworm propelled by electric guitar and Carpenter’s twangy vocals. The track toes the line between insecurity and obtrusive pride as Carpenter taunts her ex’s new flame: “Every time you breathe his air / just know I was already there!” Though the lyrics appear, on the surface, vengeful and even egocentric, it takes only a bit of introspection to realize that the song itself might be a coping device for Carpenter’s jealousy and self-doubt. At the end of the bridge, she breaks the fourth wall, declaring, “Singing ‘bout it don’t mean I care.” I don’t know if we should believe her — and I don’t think she wants us to.
On “Coincidence,” Carpenter drops one sarcastic one-liner after another, as a cheerful, Indigo Girls-esque acoustic backdrop bolsters her feigned naivete. When she catches her ex in the act with a new girl, she responds in the voice of the childish, clueless persona he once cast her in. She teases, “What a surprise / Your phone just died / Your car drove itself from LA to her thighs.” As Carpenter drags out the “what a coincidence” at the end of each chorus, she leaves just enough liminal silence for us to hear her frustration.
In “Slim Pickins,” I can practically hear Carpenter’s defeated, wry grin when she laments, “A boy who’s jacked and kind / Can’t find his ass to save my life.” She’s genuinely disappointed, and the song’s folksy, string facade is just that — a facade — to guard her nihilism about the dating pool.
Carpenter’s blunt discussion of fair-weather boyfriends, sexual fantasies and self-sabotage — across even the most radio-friendly of tracks — showcases a courageous lack of filter and her strong sense of self. She overcomes the storied misalignment between our public and private lives, in which we’re most scared to share the thoughts and feelings that nearly everyone else is experiencing, too.
In “Juno,” a track about — to put it as the 2007 film does — getting knocked up, Carpenter matter-of-factly recalls, “I showed my friends, then we high-fived / Sorry if you feel objectified.” Her apology comes too late — she’s already said the thing. Her words spill out before her thoughts, just like they do for most of us in our worst moments. Unlike many artists, though, Carpenter hasn’t parsed through and thoughtfully rearranged the interaction before she writes about it; she simply says what happened.
Later in “Juno,” Carpenter is yet again one of us, a layperson, a woman of the people: “I’m so fucking horny.” With her starkly unedited and egoless lyrics, she ushers in an era of “pop” centered on the genre’s nominal purpose — to connect, candidly and directly, to all of us.