Sabrina Carpenter: Short and Sweet and Back For More
Sabrina Carpenter is riding out the success of her '24 album Short n' Sweet and released a deluxe version back in February, featuring five new songs. Speaking anecdotally for a moment, I have had a journey with Sabrina Carpenter. This time last year, I would have described myself as unphased by Carpenter. She had some fun songs (Feather and Nonsense), and I'd be happy to hear her played in a club, but overall... I found the singer-songwriter diaristic style of her previous album, emails i can't send, derivative and boring. However, Short n' Sweet changed my mind. Pop music has always been my genre of choice, and after releasing Short n' Sweet, Carpenter was finally able to position herself as a household name. The fun, flirty, irreverent style of the record finally gave Carpenter the mainstream recognition that her music deserves, and being such a fan of the first iteration, I could not wait to listen to the bonus tracks on Short n' Sweet.
The first new track is 15 Minutes, and in typical Carpenter style, cleverly explores Carpenter's relationship to fame through the use of sexual innuendo. Here, Carpenter ponders what will happen after her fifteen minutes of fame are up, and what she can do to keep the momentum going after her meteoric rise to the spotlight last year. The intro to this song is very cool, with a strange, almost alien synthy sound accompanied by crescendoing drums upon entering the verse. The chorus is then underscored by distorted guitar and synths, which adds so much texture to the track.
The next song is the much beloved 'Please Please Please', featuring Dolly Parton. Now, I love Sabrina, love Dolly, love the original song... but this does not work. The countryfied instrumentation of the song is pretty, as is the layered harmonies between the two singers. But, overall, Dolly ends up sounding a bit strange on her verse. If I were to have it my way, I would've loved to see Dolly Parton feature on 'Slim Pickins' as it's much more suited to her style.
Next up is 'Couldn't Make It Any Harder'. First of all, melodically, it sounds very similar to 'Hopelessly Devoted To You' from Grease. This song is not for me - it's a sleepy, meandering ballad with uninteresting lyrics. When compared to one of the ballads from the main tracklist, such as Dumb and Poetic, it becomes clear that interesting, incisive lyrics can save what is, melodically speaking, a pretty boring song. When I listen to Dumb and Poetic, I am not gripped by the actual music, but rather the absolute character assassination she lyrically pulls off against the subject of the song. In ‘Couldn’t Make It Any Harder,’ the arpeggiated guitar chords in the intro, which are also layered under the vocals, feel like an overused feature in music, so it would have been nice to hear something different or more experimental. The bluesy, walking bass line really adds to the sleepy feeling of this song, like it’s the last song playing at the bar as the stragglers gently sway under the disco ball. Overall, the instrumentation just needed a little something extra to really make the song stand out: musically, it just sounds a bit safe.
Time for the main diva herself, 'Busy Woman'. This is by far the standout track from the deluxe songs. It's fun, it's catchy, it's flirty, it's all the best characteristic traits of Sabrina Carpenter's music rolled into one song. 'Busy Woman' is a deeply unserious song, and I think Sabrina is at her best when she leans into her funny, charming side and veers away from overly wrought, diaristic, confessional songwriting. That's why 'Nonsense' and 'Feather' were the standout tracks from the last album, not forgetting of course the smash hit, Espresso. This is pop music at its best: fun, a little bit vacuous, but so listenable and sure to get everyone in a good mood. Busy Woman leans into a disco style, with fun string flourishes between the chorus and verse, which I love. Further, the sparse production on the verses contrasts amazingly with the fullness of the choruses. Finally, the addition of the robotic voice saying ‘busy woman’ at the end of the chorus and Carpenter’s ‘oh hey’ adds so much fun and personality to this track.
The final song is 'Bad Reviews', another sleepy, guitar-led ballad. It's kinda 'Slim Pickins' boring sister. When I listened to this one, my only thought was "That's pretty, that was nice," but other than that, there's just not much to say. Carpenter's vocal performance is beautiful, and the addition of the fiddle is a welcome feature. However, the length of this song doesn’t do it any favours. At only 2 minutes and 21 seconds of playtime, with long instrumentals in the middle, it doesn’t feel as though the song has enough time to grow into something more interesting. Just when it’s taking off, the song ends without reaching a satisfying conclusion. The last 20 seconds are striking, with the quickening pace, soaring strings and intense rising vocals. But overall, it just isn’t enough.
From this review, it may seem like I am only drawn to the overtly pop-style songs Carpenter creates, praising the upbeat dance songs on the album whilst disregarding the others. But, when I look more broadly at her discography, I really do think Carpenter is a multi-talented artist and should not be confined to this more narrow, fun version of pop. Sabrina Carpenter has some excellent ballads, which are both musically and lyrically interesting. For example, ‘Lie To Girls’ is a standout from the original album. This track crescendos throughout the song, building to an emotional apex where Sabrina Carpenter is no longer just singing about herself, but to all girls and women out there. The line ‘I’m just like my mother and my sister, all my friends, the girl outside the strip club getting her tarot cards read,’ is such a strong, unique image to conjure and effectively hits the emotional core of the song. There’s also an immediacy created in the music. The repetitive, chanting lines of, ‘girls will lie and girls will cry…’ with building harmonies which eventually just drop off musically evokes what it feels like to be in a spiral. Here, the music and the lyrics complement each other excellently, and thus create a very effective and affecting song. The song then finishes with a long, instrumental outro, a rarity in pop music these days, which allows the listener to decompress and take in what they just heard. In contrast, the slower tracks on the deluxe version just didn’t have the same depth, variety or experimentation in instrumentation, which ultimately made them fall a bit flat.
So, overall, I'm not fussed about these new songs. Did they add anything to the original tracklist? No. To me, Short n' Sweet was already pretty much the perfect pop album, so if it's not broken, don't fix it. If anything, in my opinion, the deluxe tracks take away from the brilliance of the album.
