After spending the early years of her music career releasing music under the Disney label, Sabrina Carpenter has finally arrived with what she calls her “big girl” album.
Following a summer where her early release singles, “Espresso” and “Please, Please, Please” dominated streaming charts, Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet is an album that delivers on half its premise.
Clocking in at a crisp 36 minutes, the album is certainly short. However, its overall messages of how to handle breakups and relationships are anything but sweet.
Both a wordplay on her physical height and the length and quality of her relationships, Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet is stuffed with so many double entendres it would make her previous tour partner, Taylor Swift, blush. Unfortunately for the listener, the album’s title remains the tamest pun throughout its runtime.
Backed by the smooth sounds of what’s known as TikTok pop, the album’s descriptions of romantic escapades, sexual innuendos, and overall excess become overwhelming.
Carpenter wants you to know she’s grown up. But there’s a big difference between getting older and growing more mature.
It’d be hard to listen to Carpenter’s songs and question her self-confidence. As Plugged In has covered on her two number-one hit singles, when she enters a relationship, she’s well aware of what she’s looking for in a potential partner.
Equally so, Carpenter has a knack for self-reflection, albeit she often focuses on everything that went wrong and blames others instead of taking responsibility for her actions. Yet, songs such as “Sharpest Tool,” “Dumb & Poetic,” and “Juno” show how much time she has spent processing the outcomes of her relationships. And that’s positive … right?
In “Lie to Girls” Carpenter tells her partner that he doesn’t have to lie to himself or change who he is to get the approval of others.
Carpenter spends 12 songs crafting her reports from the front lines of her dating experiences. Each account is packed with profane summarizations of last night’s sex and how to get revenge on her exes.
“Taste” opens the album with a knowing admission of her partner’s infidelity saying, “I heard you’re back together and if that’s true/You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin you.” (Carpenter says she’s bisexual, by the way, which may help explain the implicit reference to a same-sex relationship here.)
“Bed Chem” contains the album’s most vulgar innuendos and sexual descriptions. When discussing their chemistry in bed, Carpenter sings, “I bet we’d have really good bed chem/How you pick me up, pull ‘em down, turn me ‘round…” and also references various sexual positions, “And I bet the thermostat’s set at 69.”
In “Good Graces” Carpenter warns future suitors to “Stay in her good graces” or else she’ll “Switch it up so fast/Cause no one’s more amazin’/At turnin’ lovin’ into hatred.” The song also features the repeated vengeful chorus: “I won’t give a f— about you.”
“Slim Pickins” opens with Carpenter singing, “Guess I’ll end this life alone” because there’s no guy out there worthy enough to be with her. She later says, “Oh it’s slim pickings/if I can’t have the one I love.” After misusing the name of Jesus, she also says, “And since the Lord forgot my gay awakenin’/Then I’ll just be here in the kitchen / Servin up some moanin’ and b—hin’.”
In “Dumb & Poetic,” Carpenter sings about how the guy she’s chosen to have sex with is addicted to drugs (mushrooms in this case) and also says that he, “F— with my head like it’s some kind of fetish.”
In “Sharpest Tool” Carpenter recounts how her ex has cheated on her, while also comparing sex to the experience of knowing God. “Lie to Girls” contains the line: “It’s lucky for you/I’m just like … the girl outside the strip club getting her tarot cards read.”
“Juno” serves as a sly reference to the 2007 film of the same name in which a teenager navigates a pregnancy. Carpenter puts a twist on the narrative, by saying, “If you love me right, who knows?/I might let you make me Juno.” It’s a concerning portrayal of how little she thinks of sex and the gift of pregnancy.
A majority of the album’s songs also feature various uses of profanity and misuses of Jesus’ name. There are also several references to masturbation and “jacking off” across the album. Several of the song’s choruses mimic sexual sounds as well.
Sabrina Carpenter would be the first to admit that anyone is capable of both breaking someone’s heart and getting their heart broken. She’s honest about her dating history. But she spends the majority of this album also playing off more serious concerns about cheating, lust, and pregnancy with cheeky humor and sarcasm.
It’s clear that Carpenter has yet to take any of this seriously.
Listen closely to Short n’ Sweet and it doesn’t take long to discover one of the more well-disguised productions of sexual vulgarity and profanity masquerading as a picture of summer pop escapism.
Carpenter might be right about the need to escape something. But in this case, it’s the harmful cycle of meaningless sex and destructive relationships she should avoid rather than encouraging others to dive headfirst into the promises of Short n’ Sweet.
Jackson Greer is a High School English Teacher in the suburbs of Texas. He lives in Coppell, Texas with his wife, Clara. They love debating whether or not to get another cat and reading poetry together. Also, he is a former employee of Focus on the Family’s Parenting Department.
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