Hi! Thanks again for the views. So, after I finished my 5-album series, I wanted to share one more album review with you. I had been teasing it for a long time, and after 132,947,323,589 years, it's finally here. You all know what it is. It's Short N Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter, aka one of the best albums of the year. It's also my 13th album review, so I was thinking I would do a Taylor Swift album, but the 5,000 pageviews special I'm planning soon is Taylor Swift-related, and this album is just too great not to share my review of. So, let's get into it!
1. Taste
My rating: 5/5 Great
This is the third single from the album, and it's a great album opener. First of all, let's talk about this production. One of the biggest things I love about this album is that it does a wonderful job of blending genres, and a bit of country influence runs through many of the tracks. This song introduces the overall musical style of the album which I quite like. And the lyrics are interesting. It's about her recent breakup with Shawn Mendes and how he got back together with Camila. But it's not being sung to Shawn, rather to Camila, warning her that the things they do together had already been done with Sabrina (which immediately reminded me of Olivia Rodrigo's Deja Vu, which I still prefer, but this song doesn't feel like a direct ripoff or anything). Essentially, she's saying that when Camila and Shawn kiss, she's gonna "taste" where Sabrina had been before. It's a weird song, but usually I like weird songs.
2. Please Please Please
My rating: 5/5 Great
We all know this one. It was her first #1 on Billboard charts and a recent #1 song on the Hits 1 Weekend Countdown. Usually I'm not the type of person who thinks of major radio hits as being even close to any artist's best songs (maybe because I love sad songs and acoustic ballads and that kind of thing, which typically don't perform well on radio), but so far the only real exceptions I've found have been Good 4 U & Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo, Everything I Wanted, Happier than Ever & My Future by Billie Eilish, Willow by Taylor Swift, and this song. This takes the genre-blending idea to an incredible degree, combining 70s-esque synths and beats, country-inspired vocal harmonies and acoustic guitars, and a fantastic key change in the second verse. So that's primarily why I love this song, but the lyrics are also well-written. I think it's kinda funny that Hits 1's clean version says "mothertrucker". But that's besides the point. It's just a great song.
3. Good Graces
My rating: 5/5 Great
Alright, we've reached the first non-single of the album. And I quite like this one. Lyrically, it reminds me of Please Please Please in that it's about the consequences of her boyfriend doing something stupid in a relationship, with this one being even more direct about its message. While it may not be quite as great as Please Please Please, it's still a very strong song. The production is pretty cool-sounding as well. It's got kind of an electronic beat, which isn't used a lot throughout this album, so it definitely sounds very different from many of the other songs on here. So, it's a great song.
4. Sharpest Tool
My rating: 5/5 Great
Another great song! I love the lyrics here, as they're very relatable. It's about reflecting on a breakup when you knew the entire time that the person you were with wasn't the "sharpest tool in the shed" and moving on quickly from the relationship. It's got a unique structure to it also, which I quite like. And the production sounds very different from other songs on here. It feels almost R&B to me which was interesting to hear on this album. So, pretty great song. Not much else to say here.
5. Coincidence
My rating: 5/5 Great
So, like I said earlier, Sabrina took somewhat of a country route with some of the songs on this album. This is probably the most country-inspired songs on here, with the acoustic guitar production and vocal harmonies. I love how everything sounds here. The lyrics are perfectly written as well. It's another song about Shawn and Camila, and although this song may seem more stripped-down, Sabrina's signature unhinged humor shines here. ("Your car drove itself from LA to your thighs!") So this is one of my favorite songs on the album I think.
6. Bed Chem
My rating: 3/5 Decent
Well, we've reached our first less-than-great song on here. It's my "least favorite" on the album, but it's still tolerable at least. As you may know, I'm not a huge fan of songs that are this sexually explicit. It's one of those weird R&B songs that just somehow sounds like a sexual song, and it's really boring to me. There is literally nothing interesting about this song other than being very sexual. But I guess it's not particularly bad. It's just a bit weird. So, moving on.
7. Espresso
My rating: 4/5 Good
This song needs no introduction. The song of the summer of 2024. The lead single and biggest hit off the album, and like many biggest hits and lead singles, it's not great. But it's still good. The 80s-style synthy R&B production sounds alright, but it doesn't evolve much, and at times it kind of sounds like a song from a Starbucks commercial if that makes sense. I do think the lyrics are really clever though. When I first saw the title, I didn't know what to think of it, but in this song she's comparing herself to the coffee, keeping her partner up at night. So, decent song but nothing too special in the context of the whole album.
8. Dumb & Poetic
My rating: 5/5 Great
W O W. I was not expecting this album to have a deeply meaningful breakup ballad, but surprise surprise, it does, and unsurprise unsurprise, it's my favorite song on the album. If I had to describe these lyrics in three words, it would be "Short N Sour", because it's the shortest song on the album, and I'm pretty sure it's about Joshua Bassett. The lyrics are just packed with genius (this song shows that Sabrina is Smart & Poetic), including a Leonard Cohen name-drop, a clever reference to Joshua Bassett by mentioning cherries in the first verse, a common theme throughout Joshua's lyrics, and just line-after-line, unhinged but in the best possible way. And the production is wonderful. Typically short songs don't feel like they evolve enough for me to love them that much, but this has that emotional buildup throughout that sounds amazing. So, I think it's safe to say this is the best song on the album. Since this is basically like Sabrina Carpenter's The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, I was almost tempted to give this a 6, but I'm reserving that for songs that are just extra special to me. But it's still my favorite song on the album, and my favorite Sabrina song, no contest.
9. Slim Pickins
My rating: 5/5 Great
Alright, it's gonna be pretty hard to top Dumb & Poetic, but this song is still great. It's another one about a very relatable concept - desperately trying to find the person of your dreams, but that person being rare to find. The lyrics are pretty funny, with clever lines like "A boy who's nice that breathes", "The good ones are deceased or taken", and especially that outro, "Since the good ones call their exes wasted, and since the Lord forgot my gay awakening, then I'll just be here in the kitchen serving up some moaning and bitching." I also love the production, which also has a kind of pop-country sound to it. So, it's another favorite on the album.
10. Juno
My rating: 4/5 Good
*sigh* One thing I'm kind of known for as a blogger is that I generally don't love the songs that are most people's favorites. And this one's okay, but I think I don't love it as much as some of the other songs on here for the same reason as Bed Chem: it's just too sexually explicit for me to actually enjoy listening to it. I will say though, it is better than Bed Chem because the lyrics are more interesting and clever at times, and the production is significantly better than that of Bed Chem even though it does sound like a worse version of Feather. So, not the worst thing on the album, but still one of my "least favorites". I've heard some people say this would make a good fourth single from the album, but I actually highly doubt it'll be a single considering how sexual it is. More likely Good Graces or Slim Pickins would be the next single choices if anything.
11. Lie to Girls
My rating: 5/5 Great
So, the last two tracks are a bit "slower", and as you may know, I typically like "slower" songs more than this entire music blogging community combined. And of course I really like these two tracks. I think I like this one slightly more. I'm not entirely sure what it's about, but like many songs on the album, the lyrics are cleverly written, including the repeated refrain, "You don't have to lie to girls, if they like you they'll just lie to themselves", and I love the little interlude in the second verse when it says "We love to read the cold hard facts and swear they're incorrect, we love to mistake butterflies for cardiac arrest". And this has really cool production on top of it. It's got this synthy atmospheric sound to it but it evolves as it goes on. Clearly another on of my favorites on the album.
12. Don't Smile
My rating: 5/5 Great
Okay, we've reached the final track. I'm not gonna review the bonus tracks just because I'm trying to keep this review relatively short (and sweet), but you can see reviews of those on Bubby's blog. This is definitely a solid closing track. So, the premise of this song is a twist on the common phrase "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." Here, she says, "don't smile because it happened, cry because it's over." It's essentially about regrets after a breakup, and it's possibly about Joshua Bassett. Also, this is probably unintentional because I couldn't find any further connections between the two songs, the second verse starts with the line "Pour my feelings into the microphone" which is somewhat of a parallel to the well-known opening line of Espresso's second verse "I'm working late cuz I'm a singer". Don't think that means anything here, but just interesting to mention. But anyway, I obviously love the lyrics here, and the production is similar to Lie to Girls but just as great. Wonderful closer.
Conclusion
Overall album rating: 93% (Great Album)
Interestingly this got the same score as when Bubby reviewed it. I will say though, considering how short albums like this have much less room for error than a lengthier album that can afford to have multiple mediocre or bad songs and still get a pretty good score, this album managed to perfectly live up to it's name and stay Short N Sweet throughout.
Favorite songs: Please Please Please, Coincidence, Slim Pickins, Dumb & Poetic
"Least" favorite songs: Bed Chem
That's all for now! Byeeeeeeeeee!
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